


The Forever Crown

by whichstiel



Series: Forever Crown [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, F/F, Fairies, Hunters & Hunting, Motorcycles, Resurrection, charlie comes back to life because reasons, fake FBI agenting, some violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-18 12:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7315939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie's back on earth after being dead for over a year. As she investigates her mysterious resurrection, something lurks near her old Michigan stomping grounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Charlie wakes up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie returns.

Charlie woke to the feeling of cold porcelain against her cheek, an operatic movie score pounding in her ears. Blearily, she looked around. Wherever she was, it was dark in the room itself. A little wavering blue light wobbled through a cracked door and illuminated a sink, toilet, shower curtain. They were old fixtures done up in fifties pink and teal, colors barely discernible as her eyes adjusted to the light. Those should be covered in blood, she thought. Then, _why would I think that?_ She looked down at the legs lying cockeyed in the empty bathtub and it took a while for her to move them, to realize that they were her legs. As her mind reclaimed her body memories rushed back and she yelled and kicked out, trying to stand. The last time she’d been in this bathtub it had been as she lay dying, her vision fading as that blond asshole leered over her. 

In the next room the sound cut off and a light flicked on, flooding the bathroom with orange fluorescent light. The silence was even worse. Instinct kicked in and Charlie grabbed the first thing at hand. She pointed a thin bar of soap menacingly at the door, then shook her head. What was she going to do? Shiv them with soap? No. She’d smack them between the eyes and run. Her aim had always been excellent. 

“Hello?” The voice outside the door sounded tentative but Charlie narrowed her eyes. Whatever Bill and Ted hell scenario she was in now, she wouldn’t be fooled. Nerves steeled, she readied the soap. 

The door swung open. A young man peered through it at her. He held a remote in his raised fist, like a baseball bat. Charlie screamed and threw the soap. It landed squarely between his eyes. He yelled and reeled back, slashing the air wildly with the remote. Charlie made herself small and barreled past him into the room. The hotel room looked just as it had the night she died and for a moment, she reeled as fear and nausea threatened to overwhelm her. But just ahead of her was the door and just beyond the door...maybe another hell vision? It didn’t matter as long as she could pry herself free from this nightmare den first. She swung the door open. Or tried. It was secured with a chain lock. 

“Frak!” She struggled clumsily with the chain then threw open the door. One last look back before she fled into the night revealed the man, remote in hand, jaw slack, standing in the doorway of the bathroom. 

Charlie ran.

The night hovered malevolently and Charlie stuck to lit main streets as she ran through the town. The streetlamps leached the world of color. They flickered in a domino cascade overhead. Dull gray-orange people, objects, storefronts were better than the oppressive darkness of wooded areas and private yards where sadistic southerners with knives probably lay in wait. The longer she ran, the more the world sank into her senses. 

The air felt crisp and cool with a hint of fresh rainstorm. It was spring. She could smell lilacs as she ran through neighborhoods of small tract houses. In her gut just above where she’d been stabbed a stitch of pain bloomed. Charlie slowed and pulled up her shirt to inspect her stomach. It was smooth and clean. Her lungs moved air in and out, in and out. Sharp. Painful. But real and so astoundingly complex that she had to stop for a moment and crumple over, hands on knees, just to grasp it.

Something Dean once said crept into her mind: Death isn’t always the end. She had died in that bathtub, of that she was sure. She remembered so clearly after that times with her parents, of pizza in the bunker, of a kiss with a fairy. Memories rerunning as she wallowed in bliss in Heaven. But this. The mundane town around her giving way to rural back roads felt more solid than anything she had felt in a long time. 

Charlie slowed to a walk, took a deep breath, and felt it fill her up right to her fingertips. She would kill those Winchesters. Right after she hugged them for a good solid day, at least. She stole a bicycle to ride the distance from this town to the bunker's sleepy rural base, dodging off the road and flattening herself in ditches if she saw headlights. _Still feeling about ninety percent paranoid. Getting killed will do that to you._

Neither the Impala nor Castiel’s tan monstrosity were outside the bunker when she arrived so she let herself in using the hidden keypad she had installed a year ago. Several years ago? Maybe she should have stopped by a Gas ‘n’ Sip and done a newspaper date check. Assuming there were still newspapers. Man, resurrection was confusing. 

As the bunker door closed behind her she called out, “Hello? Dean? Sam? Cas?” Everything in the bunker looked the same, lit by the same old emergency sconces. “Is anyone here? I’m back, bitches” she said feebly and her voice echoed unanswered to all corners of the main room. No reply. Shit. She hesitated for a moment, then descended the stairs into the bunker proper. It was just as she remembered it. The war room, the library full of delicious and strange books, the hallways reeking of rank world war cement block claustrophobia. 

“Okay. Don’t panic. If the boys aren’t here maybe they did the resurrection spell somewhere else? I mean, just assuming it’s a spell. It’s a big, weird world. Maybe they left a note? Maybe they’re back at the hotel.” This made her feel suddenly ill. “Noooope. They can just drag their sorry asses back and find me here. I’ll just…” She pulled out a chair at one of the large wooden tables and slipped into it, feeling small. “Wait.”

A moment later she pushed herself up from the table again. “Who am I kidding. Sam? Dean?” She moved through the hallways, peering in rooms. Every empty room made her heart pound harder. Every empty hallway made her feel more alone. 

The bunker was infuriatingly devoid of clocks, but Charlie judged it to be several hours since she had...resurrected. If Sam and Dean had done some kind of spell, they should be back by now. The next thought, unbidden, made her shiver. If they hadn’t brought her back then who did?

Charlie shoved that thought back into her roiling brain for later perusal (maybe when it didn’t make her feel like curling into a fetal position?) and set out to figure out a plan. The bunker had a computer system, but it was virtually useless for 21st century internet. She’d planned on wiring the place up, installing solid wifi, anonymizing routers, the works. But she guessed after she died those plans did as well. If she could just find one phone and laptop she could set up decent wifi hotspot and figure out her new life as god intended: by going online. 

She pressed her hands into the library table. Sam and Dean usually traveled with their tech, but she’d ransack their rooms first. If that was a bust she could take one of the vintage hunter-mobiles from the garage and head into town. With just a little starter cash she could access one of her alternate identities. Charlie Bradbury and Carrie Heinlein were probably officially dead but surely some of her others were still viable, as long as too many years hadn’t gone by. “Always do a newspaper check,” Charlie grumbled.

Charlie checked in her old room and Sam's typically more tech friendly shelves before ransacking Dean’s room. She checked under his bed (hesitantly - this was Dean after all) and her face lit up. “My stuff,” she crooned as she pulled out her large purple duffel bag. She unzipped it and released a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Reverently, she pulled out her Hermione bobblehead, still nestled on top of her clothes. “Looks like I Harry Pottered this mother,” she said as H nodded. “We get to start over _again_. Yay.”

“First things first.” Charlie set Hermione down then pulled out a pair of jeans and Star Wars original movie poster shirt. “Get out of these fucking murder clothes.” She balled up the clothes she removed and tossed them into the corner by the door. Did the bunker have an incinerator? That seemed plausible. If so, she was so going to torch the clothes she’d been stabbed in, frugality be damned.

Slipped into the side pocket of her duffel she found her phone. It was off and when she turned it on there was definitely no longer service. The battery flashed frantically but it worked. Charlie smiled. “Yahtzee.” Reactivating the phone wouldn’t be a problem. She sat down at the end of Dean’s bed, plugged it in, and got to work. Once she had a phone connection she tried the numbers she had for Sam, Dean, and Cas. Every number she had for them ended in dead ends, wrong numbers, or voicemail. Exasperated, she frowned. “Frak. Answer your goddamn phones,” she shouted at the phone in her hand, which was not actually calling anyone at the time. Charlie sighed, opened up her mail, and sent Sam and Dean a note.

“Hey guys! Not awkward at all, but I’m here at the bunker - alive. Where are you guys? Call me. 555-826-6154. Better not have deleted me from your phones, nerds. Come home? Been a weird day.

Love, Charlie”

As data (blissful data) flooded into her hand Charlie took stock of her life and of the world. Over a year had passed since she’d...last been on earth. Some of her identities were still alive and she found her stash of IDs in her duffel. She clutched them to her. “Bless you Dean, you crazy little packrat.” 

Most of her credit cards were expired, but there were still two that had valid dates. She’d have to run them once she had a better computer but it looked like she had some money to start with. Charlie laid it all out on the bed. Seven t-shirts. One Fed suit. Two flannels. One jacket. Three pairs of jeans. Some socks and underwear. H. Credit cards and some fake IDs. An EMF and a Hello Kitty knife she'd bought for summer camp the year before her parents died. Her entire life, laid out on the spartan bedspread. 

“Dudes. Where are you guys?” she whispered. Her fingers toyed with a loose thread spiraling out of Dean’s comforter. She looked around Dean’s room. “Do you still have the Mark?” The last time she’d seem him despair rolled off of him in almost palpable waves. What if Dean had gone off the deep end? And they were out on some kind of endless hunt chasing after a homicidal--? But no. It didn’t bear thinking about. After some hesitation, she curled down onto Dean’s pillow, clutching her phone and sweeping her cards to her like a dragon’s hoard. After a long time of listening to nothing but the sounds of the bunker settling around her, she fell asleep.


	2. Charlie has a dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie looks for clues to the Winchesters' whereabouts in the bunker and learns about a possible case in Michigan.

In her leather jerkin, pants, and soft leather boots, Charlie blended in perfectly with the rotting brown undergrowth of the forest. She crouched, careful to keep her weight balanced and ready to run. In her hands she held Eloidril, her bow, with the string pulled tight. She kept the notched arrow directed at the ground, but ready to pull up for her quarry. The woods were quiet, the trees old, large, and coated in rich green moss. 

Charlie knew the deer approached when the drone of insects ceased abruptly. The deer ambled over a small rise in the wood, pale and delicate, tall and fae. Her fur was white, dappled with gray. Even from this distance Charlie could see her eyes reflecting light like deep, black pools. The deer wandered through the trees and wound her way down to the oxbow stream. She looked around her, flanks twitching, then lowered her head to drink. 

Silently, Charlie rose from her crouch and stood for a moment, watching the deer lap at the stream. She had been chasing the white doe for several months now and this was the closest she had gotten. Eloidril, a gift from the Elf Queen of the Silkwood, hummed in her hands with the proximity of her quarry. She lifted her bow and sighted along the arrow. That was how she spotted it: a dark shadow moving slowly in the deep green woods that grew thick on the oxbow’s island. The more she looked at it, the more it seemed like less of a shadow and more of an absence of light. Dread bloomed in her stomach. The shadow approached the doe. Charlie wanted to scream, to warn it even though she herself was intent on killing the creature. But she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Once it finished with the deer, it would come for her. 

Charlie woke with a clenching, gasping spasm, her stomach in knots. “Jesus, Charlie,” she told herself. “Can’t you just have nice Tolkein dreams?” She rubbed her aching stomach. “So friggin’ hungry,” she complained. She hauled herself upright and groaned. Oh, man everything hurt. She should have just hitched a ride instead of running like a freak. She zombie shuffled out of Dean’s room and into the bunker’s kitchen. 

The kitchen never had much in it - a byproduct of belonging to two frequently absent, fast-food-eating dudes. But to her surprise the refrigerator actually had sliced cheese and unexpired deli meat. She made herself a tall sandwich, grabbed a beer, and sank into the food gratefully. Sam must have done the shopping. Thank god. 

Eating made her feel a little more human and dissipated some of the lingering dream anxiety. Today she’d hear from Dean and Sam. She’d go to town and get some money, a new computer, and a good sized basket of junk food. She’d feel the sun on her face. For a moment Charlie was lost in contemplating her hands, the rush of blood, the feeling of the food beneath her fingers. 

Charlie emerged from her reverie. Okay. First thing’s first. If Sam and Dean weren’t answering their phones, if they had done a spell to bring her back, maybe there were clues in the bunker she could use to track them down. 

On the library table sat a stack of books, a few lying open on the table. She started there, flipping closed one of the open books to read the cover. “On the Principles of Lyfe and the Seventh Circle,” she read aloud. Promising. It was open to a page detailing photosynthesis, however. Less promising. A blinking light on the war room table caught her eye. Odd. She’d never seen one of those lights flash before. Curious, she got up and looked at the wide table. 

The war room table, a map of the world with little pinholes in it, looked like a cold war relic straight out of a TV show. Charlie knew the theory behind the table. When there was some kind of particularly worrisome supernatural activity the table lit up. It didn’t do that very often and she questioned the utility of a table that warns you that something big is going on, but never spits out any details. She clicked her tongue in aggravation. One of these days she’d have to finish hacking the table and give it a usable readout. 

The light blinked persistently on the border of the US and Canada, right on the thumbprint of Michigan. Right around where she’d last been living it up as Carrie Heinlein. She shivered and touched a finger to the bulb. 

“Okay, okay. What does this mean? I’m back. There’s a war table light blinking where I used to live. Probably coincidence, right?” She leaned on the table for a moment, head hung low before pushing herself upright. “Damn it. It’s never a coincidence. Alright. Theory.” She began to pace. ”Sam and Dean raise me from the dead. In Michigan?” That would explain why they weren’t at the bunker. “But why Michigan?” As soon as she asked the question she knew the answer. Her storage locker. 

Before she’d flown to Europe to find the Book of the Damned, Charlie had taken a side trip to clear out her apartment and store most of her stuff at a U-Store. She’d suspected that a quest for a creepy book might outlast an apartment lease and her experiences with Oz had taught her that unexpected side adventures could happen any time. She hadn’t been ready to pull a Sam and Dean and live out of a car entirely. So she’d packed everything in boxes and put them in a storage cubicle, slapping a brand new credit card for Dolores Adams on the account. 

What could they have gotten from storage that they couldn’t get from her stuff here? She puzzled through what she had learned about hunting. Spirits stayed on earth anchored to objects typically marked with DNA - blood, skin, hair. Maybe they’d gone there to use her possessions to pull her back. There was probably some blood on her Moondoor armor. After all, you couldn’t learn to swing a broadsword without breaking a little skin. Sam knew she had the locker. He could have puzzled it out. It was weak, but it was the best idea she had for the moment.

Charlie pulled out her phone and sat down at the war table in front of the blinking light and pulled up news sites that served the Detroit area. At first nothing seemed to call out supernatural to her. And then she saw it. Two local women found dead within a day of each other at a local park. No foul play suspected. “Hmm. Went hiking in forest preserve. Found dead off trail yesterday. Suspected natural causes. Second one found in parking lot this morning. No foul play, my ass,” said Charlie, the blinking light flashing in front of her. She shoved the phone in her pocket. Well, she was alive and the Winchesters still hadn’t bothered to return her frickin’ phone calls. Maybe they were in Michigan. Maybe not. She was pretty sure there was a case there, either way. 

Back in Dean’s room she piled everything back into her duffel, snuggling Hermione in a nest made between jeans and an old Fraggle Rock t-shirt. A little more scrounging in Dean’s room rewarded her with a loaded handgun, three mean looking knives, a sawed off shotgun loaded with what looked like salt rounds, and her katana sword. She smiled fondly. Of course Dean would sleep in a room bristling with weapons. She’d hit up the armory for more ammo, too. From his room she headed into the bathroom and rummaged for toiletries in the rusty shelves near the sinks. She took a towel, three rolls of toilet paper, and a box of tampons she’d stashed on a lower shelf for emergencies. Charlie looked down at her armful and snorted. Dead for over a year, but prepared as shit. She reached into the box of tampons, took one out, and left it on the small shelf below one of the mirrors. She grinned, imagining their faces, and left the bathroom. 

Charlie surveyed the garage. It was half full of mostly classic cars, some functioning after Dean’s ministrations but most heaps of useless metal at this point. Her heart sank a little when she didn’t see her wagon parked inside. Still, there were a few old beaters that could get her far enough to steal a car (though the thought of breaking laws outside of the online world still made her pulse quicken). 

Her gaze lit on Dorothy’s motorcycle, still parked where she’d left it when they walked out of the bunker and straight into Oz. The bike was cherry red, vintage vibes all the way, with smooth curves and luscious leather. She approached and trailed her fingers along the gold detailing, leather grips, chrome metal. Charlie pictured herself cruising into town, drifting up alongside the Impala, and casually saying, “Hey, bitches.” That sounded just about perfect. She had died for the second time already, so now seemed like a good time to start living. 

Charlie flipped open a pannier. It smelled like old leather and dust. There was something else in it too, a whiff that reminded her fleetingly of a day in Oz spent lying out in a field of flowers, clouds shaped like women performing a slow dance across the sky. The insects in that particular field were playing Brahms in a low, calming buzz. Charlie shook her head to dispel the memory. She reached into the pannier and pulled out the Tin Man’s head. “Sorry buddy,” she said to it as she set it carefully on the garage floor. “You’ll have to stay behind.” 

Her duffel was too bulky to fit into the pannier on its own so she transferred her possessions between the bags, forming a small pyramid on the floor of clothing and toiletries that wouldn’t fit. Then Charlie headed back into the main hallways of the bunker to the armory. She grabbed a thin leather bag she remembered from before - yes - still hanging on the wall. In it she put extra bullets and a handful of salt rounds that someone had lined up neatly along the counter. Back in the garage, she put the shotgun and her sword into the bag and slung it over her shoulder. It fit snugly, comfortably, against her back. 

Dean kept a supply of gas jugs in the garage and Charlie raided one of them for the motorcycle, topping up the tank. The bike looked good to her inexperienced eye with recent signs of polish and very little dust. This, more than anything, filled her with quiet hope. Dean had promised Dorothy that he would look after the bike. She thought she could rely on him, or at least his love of tinkering, to keep it working. Charlie straddled it experimentally. It felt nice. She leaned into it a little and only a little self-consciously made little engine revving noises. Charlie had never gotten past learning how to start the thing and putter it up and down the road, but she learned quickly. How hard could it be to ride a motorcycle? 

She called up the checklist Dean had made her memorize. Turn the doohickey knob half a turn, adjust the choke, bike in neutral, insert key. She gave it a few priming kicks then started it up.

The garage filled with a deep panther purr. Charlie’s face broke into a grin. “Damn that sounds good,” she muttered under the rumble. She guided the bike through the Batman tunnel and into the wooded road. Behind her the garage door closed, blending back into nondescript wall. “I’m on my way, boys,” she said as she sped away into the winding rural roads, heading across the midwest to Michigan.


	3. Charlie rides a motorcycle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie rides Dorothy's motorcycle to Michigan and begins investigating the case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Family events over the holiday weekend postponed this update. Posting more soon! 
> 
> Handel, Michigan is a fake town because a lot of this fic was outlined without internet access (and therefore, no real towns were researched in the making of this fic). Er...sorry.

The storage locker was a big, fat dead end. Charlie spent two days riding out as hell bent as she felt she could safely do, only to unlock it and find it entirely undisturbed with a thick layer of dust covering the boxes. If the Winchesters had come here to pull out some magical resurrection miracle, they had managed to raid her locker without disturbing a single item. Charlie sighed and cracked her back. 

Charlie didn’t regret her choice of transportation the first day. She’d wound her way through the Kansas backroads, at first wobbly but increasingly confident as the miles ticked past. She learned the dance of the motorcycle which required both hands and feet to operate. At some point along the way she no longer had to think through the steps. 

She stayed off the interstate after the first semi trailer blew past her at 80 miles per hour. Quieter roads were less terrifying with little but the groan of her own engine breaking the countryside. It meant she had to stop more often to wayfind but that was okay. The feeling of adventure lay thick around her and despite all that had happened in the last few days, she felt good. 

But those good feelings were swept aside both by this development and her aching arms and back. She still hadn't heard from any of the boys but wherever they were, this media blackout was probably a bad sign. In the meantime, there was a hunt on. As she had driven out, monitoring the local news, another missing person report appeared in the police blotter. 

And then there were the dreams, which felt as real as the dusty boxes beneath her fingers and as important as the dead bodies waiting in a morgue outside of Happy Valley recreation area. The prior night she had dreamed about the deer again. 

In her dream she stood in the woods as before, Eloidril slack at her side. The shadow thing that slunk from the trees reached out and touched the doe with a claw as long and curved as a scythe. A loud crack echoed through the trees and the deer broke apart and sank beneath the water. Charlie woke up just as the shadow turned towards her. She curled up into a ball on her bed after that and waited for dawn, feeling incredibly alone. 

Charlie shook her head and kicked a box which sent up a little cloud of dust. “You can do this, Charlie.” she muttered. “You are a goddamn warrior with a friggin’ sword on your back.” She closed the locker and left the U-Store behind, setting a course away from the city and towards Handel, Michigan. 

Handel was mostly a sedate suburb with a broad collar of subdivisions full of nearly identical houses. At its heart, though, it sported an adorable brick and fancy facade downtown. The recreation area where the bodies had been discovered curled around it like a broad green parenthesis. Charlie found a tiny, old motel near the center of town a few blocks away from the police station and checked in. 

Once inside the door, Charlie dropped her bag and looked around, amused. The motel, The Wandering Duck, had waterfowl themed wallpaper. Ducks and cranes stalked the walls in sixties brown and orange and the quaint room divider displayed faded green translucent lily pads bolted onto curling wrought iron cattails. She gave the mattress an experimental nudge and shook her head. “Only thing missing is a water bed. Falling down on the job, Wandering Duck.”

She had a few hours before government offices typically shut down for the day so she hung her gray fed suit up in the bathroom and took a steamy shower to wash off the road grime and try to steam the wrinkles out of her “wrinkle free” suit. After a gourmet lunch of gummy worms and a can of Zap! she felt ready to tackle the local cops. She dressed in her suit and a plain knit top and left the hotel, trying to ignore the quagmire of nerves in her belly. 

In TV shows police stations always buzzed with cops racing around balancing paperwork and perps but that never seemed to balance with reality. Handel’s police force seemed mild and quiet, working hard at desks paired up around the room. She flashed her badge and explained that she was there to see the bodies of Nancy Aiken and Sadie Law. 

This part of hunting always made her nervous. She felt like police could read her deceit on her face. Lying online was so, so much easier. To her surprise, a sergeant immediately led her back to the medical examiner’s office where a woman sat filling out forms. She looked up at Charlie’s arrival. “Grayson. FBI is here to see the body,” the sergeant told her. 

“FBI?” The medical examiner wrinkled her nose. 

“We were in the area. Thought we’d check it out,” Charlie said, parroting something she’d heard Dean trot out. _Frak. Am I sweating? I feel sweaty._ She felt the pounding rush of a world class guilty blush coming on when Grayson shrugged, stood, and led the way out the door. 

“I didn't expect you until tomorrow morning.” 

“Oh?” Charlie squeaked. “Uh, I am. We are. I’m just here early. Thought I’d get a jump on things. Early bird. Worms.” _Shut up, Charlie._ Other FBI were on their way? That probably wasn't good. How the hell was she supposed to keep up the FBI ruse with real FBI?

In the morgue the medical examiner pulled out the two bodies. The other woman offered Charlie a pair of blue gloves from a box on the sterile white counters, gestured to several aprons hanging from hooks on the wall, and went into a dry explanation of the autopsies. 

Charlie couldn’t keep her eyes off of the faces of the corpses. Both women's faces were frozen in a rictus of terror, eyes wide and mouth wrenched in a scream. “So basically,” Grayson wrapped up considerably more informally than she had begun, “it’s like they just got...scared to death.” 

_Those faces._ “Strange,” Charlie managed.

The medical examiner just snorted in reply.

“Any sign of trauma? Unusual fibers or hairs? Smells? Marks on the body? Bites? Substances?”

“Well. Even though I couldn't link it to any cause of death, I did find this.” Grayson took a cotton swab and circled it through the shell of Nancy Aiken's ear. The swab came away wet with a gray, translucent substance. “Lab's coming back with nothing on this, but both victims had traces of this in their ears.” 

Charlie's eyes widened.

“You seen this before?”

“May have.” Um, yes. Or, on the internet, anyway. It looked like ectoplasm to Charlie. “Mind if I take a sample to the downtown office for testing?”

“Be my guest.” Grayson pulled out an evidence bag, sealed the swab inside, then handed it to Charlie.

“Thanks.” Charlie handed her a business card. “Please call me if you find anything else. Uh, who is the lead detective here?” 

“Detective Nickel. He should have been notified that you're here. Surprised he hasn't joined us yet.” Grayson led Charlie out of the morgue and down the narrow hallway back to the main office area. She flagged down the sergeant manning the front desk, raised her eyebrows and jabbed a thumb at Charlie. It was clearly code for: _what do we do with her now?_

The sergeant approached. “Nickel's on his way in now. Do you mind waiting here for a few more minutes?”

Charlie didn't mind at all and settled in one of the plastic bucket seats near the front door. Ectoplasm. Okay. That could indicate ghost possession. Maybe a ghost got inside the victims and...did what? Scared them to death? Was the ghost trying to use the victims to do something? Ghost agendas usually boiled down to revenge. Charlie sighed. The evening promised to be a rollicking time of researching local traumatic deaths over pizza in her duck pond hotel room.

The door blew open and a man strode through it. “Where's the agent?” he snapped at the desk sergeant. The sergeant pointed to Charlie who instinctively raised her hand like a recalcitrant student. 

“Here,” she said. 

The man approached Charlie who shot up and fumbled for her badge, then aborted the attempt when he extended his hand. She shook it and looked up at the giant salt and pepper mustache. “Detective?” she guessed. 

“Detective Nicholas Nickel,” he said, pumping her hand enthusiastically. “Call me Nick.”

“Ah. Nice to meet you Nick.” _Nick Nickel? Wow._ “Do you have a moment to talk about the deaths at Happy Valley?” 

Nick nodded and led her to a corner desk near the bank of windows. He sat and gestured for her to sit in the plain wooden chair pushed against the wall. Charlie did so, then scooted it forward awkwardly as he dropped a green file folder on the edge of the desk. 

Charlie picked up the file and began to flip through it as he outlined the case. The first victim, Nancy Aiken, had been discovered a little ways off of the interpretive nature trail a few days ago. Her body was found lying half in the cold stream that wound through the preserve. Nothing suspicious – other than a dead body - was found at the scene. Charlie looked at the meticulous file and raised her brows. GPS coordinates and everything. This guy was good. She made a note to visit the scene with her EMF as soon as possible.

The second victim, Sadie Law, found dead in her car, had a little more backstory. She had been out in the woods with a friend when, according to the friend, she had screamed and started to run. The witness lost sight of her as she disappeared in the trees. The witness hadn't seen anything that might have warranted Sadie's apparent panic.

The detective wagged his mustache and tapped the file. “Recommend you start by interviewing the witness, Amir Sahai. Info's in the file. Don't know if you heard, but we've got a missing person, a Tony Wu, who has ties to the second vic. I'm suspecting they're connected right now. These deaths were so close together...” Nick sighed. He hunkered down and leveled a serious gray gaze at her. “Isn't looking good for Tony right now. Also, just a little head's up. Apparently Sadie, Amir, and Tony are all involved in a little game going on at at Happy Valley this week.”

Charlie nodded. Everything seemed centered around the forest preserve. That should narrow down her ghost research. “What kind of game?”

“Some kind of make-believe thing. Like a pretend battle.” He mimed jabbing a sword at her. “Called the Moondoor Jubilee.” He passed her a cartoonish city map. “Parking lot B. If Wu isn't at home you'll probably find him there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love to get feedback, so comment away! (please and thank you)


	4. Charlie interrogates people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie interviews witnesses and gathers clues.

“Moondoor,” Charlie parroted to the detective, feeling suddenly lightheaded.

“That’s right. You heard of it?” Nick leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. 

Charlie had a suspicion that she looked as shocked as she felt. She managed to nod and stand. “Well, thank you for your time, detective. I’ll just be on my way.”

“Hold on,” growled Nick. Charlie froze like a rat in a floodlight. “I’ll get you copies of the case file. You know about this Moondoor game, huh? That’s quite a coincidence. Pretty new to us around here. First time it was ever in Happy Valley, from what I hear. Must be bigger in the city.” Before she could reply he reached over the desk, snatched the file from her hands, and then stalked off to make copies. 

Charlie rubbed her sweaty palms on her pants and tried to remember how to breathe. _Moondoor?_ Her old LARPing community just so happened to be part of this case? “Coincidence, my ass,” she muttered darkly, plastering on a treacly smile when she noticed the detective returning with a sheaf of paper in his hand. She left the station with the case file copies tucked under her arm, deep in thought. Time to interview the witness, hunter style.

#

The young man who had been walking the woods with Sadie Law before she died, Amir Sahai, wasn’t answering his doorbell. Charlie pulled out her phone and tried the number in Nick Nickel’s notes. Amir answered his phone on the third ring with a soft, “Hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Sahai,” Charlie said. “I’m with the FBI. Investigating the death of Sadie Law. I’d like to talk to you about what happened to your friend. Are you home?”

Amir was silent for a few moments then, “Yeah.” 

“Great! Could you open the door, please?”

A few minutes later Charlie heard door locks rattling. Amir opened the door slowly, like he thought that any moment she was going to leap through it and attack. Charlie patiently held up her FBI badge until he stood back and let her in. She thanked him and followed him to a sagging leather couch in a living room plastered with movie posters and framed comic art. She cast an appreciative eye at the decor before settling back into the bucket cushion while he perched on the couch nervously. 

Charlie began. “I talked to Detective Nickel this afternoon. He said you were the last person to see Sadie alive?”

Amir nodded and looked down at his hands clenched in his lap. “We were playing a game. Moondoor?” At Charlie’s nod he continued. “Sadie and I are - were - Shadow Orcs so we were just patrolling the woods. Making jokes about how creepy it was with, you know, that hiker who died. And then Sadie just starts screaming and runs off. And then...” His voice wobbled.

“Then?”

“They found her in her car. Dead.”

”Did she see something? Do you know why she screamed?”

Amir shook his head miserably.

Charlie leaned towards him. “It’s okay to tell me anything. Everything. Even if it sounds crazy. I just need to know all the details so I can find the, uh, person who killed your friend.” 

"You think someone killed her?"

"Ah, I don't know. We're not ruling anything out.

Amir wrung his hands in his lap and shook his head again. “We were just walking! Like, on the path and everything. And then she just screamed and ran off.”

“Was she looking at anything? Did she say anything else?”

“She was kind of looking off ahead of us down the path. But I don’t…” He paused for a moment and Charlie imagined him replaying the incident in his mind. “I didn’t see anything. Then she just takes off screaming back down the trail and I never saw her again.”

Okay. Something invisible. Her ghost theory was starting to look solid. “Did you see anything out of the ordinary out there? Either that day, or earlier this week? Any cold spots? Strange smells?”

“Cold spots?” Amir looked taken aback. “No. It just looked like normal woods to me. I mean, we’ve been out here for a few days now. I don’t know what the hell happened. She just freaked out and left me.” The wobble in his voice turned into a cracking sob and Charlie inched her hand to his shoulder.

She patted him for a moment then said softly, “I’ve seen some strange things so nothing you say is gonna be too weird, okay? If you think of anything, give me a call.” Charlie fished out a card and set it in his hand. It was time to head to the Jubilee.

#

Charlie drove to the park entrance and immediately had to pull over, toes tingling with adrenaline. Hanging loosely below the park sign draped a banner that read: Welcome Moondoor Jubilee! She didn’t know any of the victims, but there was a high chance that she would see a lot of familiar faces as she walked through camp. Charlie shook her head then maneuvered the bike through the lot. Her Fed suit suddenly felt very strange indeed and for a moment she yearned for her Moondoor armor, stowed away in a plastic tub in her U-Store locker.

She parked the bike in a gravel turnout near a tall wooden trail map and strode into the camp with her head held high. She needed to consult with the reigning queen (who heard all) and from there, the Shadow Orcs and anyone else who spent time in the woods. It was time to bank off of her Moondoor status. She headed for the queen’s tent.

“Carrie?” Somebody said in a shocked tone. “Is that you?”

Charlie stopped and looked around. “Alastair!” she said and embraced her former bard. “Alastair the Eloquent. It is damn good to see you again.”

“Good to see me,” he sounded disbelieving. “I thought you were dead, Carrie.” He looked her up and down and his mouth worked like he was trying to speak. “Last year’s tournament was dedicated to your memory.”

‘What? Wait. Why would you think I was dead?” That was odd. She’d checked and her Carrie Heinlein identity still was technically alive. Everyone knew she’d lost her job. Wouldn’t they have assumed she just moved?

“Last year’s tournament. Those two FBI LARPers came up for the ceremony. Made a speech, burned your sword. The whole deal. So, like, literally everyone here thinks you’re dead.” He laid a hand on her shoulder, his eyes wide. “What the hell happened, Carrie?” He seemed to notice her suit for the first time. “And what the hell is up with the clothes?”

 _Fake FBI agents led the ceremony, huh?_ Ah, Sam and Dean. Her lie about working for the FBI died in her throat. “Oh yeah. Well. I’m...a police consultant now. A profiler.” And no fake badge for that. Shit.

She gripped his shoulder in return, straightened her spine, and slipped into the language of Moondoor. “It is a long story. Perhaps I’ll recount it over a cup of ale. But for now. Alastair. I need to speak with the queen.”

“Uh. Okay. Sure. This way.” He wove through the crowd and Charlie followed. Her ego got a jolt every time somebody’s eyes widened. It felt good to be recognized here, among her people.

Alastair approached a herald who stood around the queen’s tent. “A visitor for the queen,” he said.

The herald yawned. “The queen is busy, sirrah.”

Charlie stepped up. “As your former queen I demand an audience.” The herald trailed a flat gaze along her pantsuit but at Alastair’s earnest nod, parted the curtain.

“My queen, a former monarch seeks an audience.”

A round faced woman with deep brown skin and braided hair bound up in an elaborate chignon appeared at the entrance. She wore gold chainmail with dragon scales cascading down her entire right arm and a delicate elfen charm on her forehead. One of her subjects, a girl Charlie vaguely recognized from her own time as queen, sprang up from a stool and bustled past her out of the tent, leaving them alone. “Legends of your rule have passed to me,” the queen said. “Please. Come in.” She beckoned Charlie to sit down on a faux velvet upholstered stool. “Sit.”

Charlie did so and looked around with interest. She had only been Queen of Moons for a year and only part of the Moondoor community for a few years. Much of the room was achingly familiar. On a low red enamel table sat the Forever Crown and Charlie felt a flicker of pride to see it still in the queen’s hands. Where Charlie had hung her ridiculously overwrought portrait, the current queen had a rearing black stallion against a field of red swirling curtains. The Moondoor crest painted onto the horse’s gear shone with gold leaf. Swanky.

“What brings you here, former queen?”

“Please call me Carrie. And I’m here,” Charlie gestured to her outfit, “as part of a police investigation. I understand there were a few bodies found in these woods this week?”

The queen’s face fell and she sat at the edge of the bed, all imperial glamour drained. “Oh. Yeah.”

“I’m trying to learn more about it. See if anyone might have seen anything important. I know one of your subjects has been reported missing as well. What have you heard?”

The queen ran a hand over her face. “Nobody I’ve talked to has seen anything strange, other than what Amir told us. The orcs stomped all over the woods all last weekend up to a few days ago and we had several raiding parties. I mean. It’s just normal nature paths around here. Kids smoking up in the bushes. That kind of stuff. As far as the body goes…we all thought the hiker just had a heart attack. And then Sadie.”

The queen cleared her throat, stood, and strode over to the map table. “They found that hiker here,” she said, pointing to a bend in the stream that wound its way through the forest. She pointed to a far opposite corner. "Amir was walking with Sadie over here. After Sadie, we pulled everyone out of the woods so now we're all sticking to this field. That’s why the orcs are camping on the other side of our tent row.

“I’m really worried about Tony,” she said. “It’s not like him to miss out. Some people think he bailed after what happened to Sadie. But nobody can get in touch with him. God, we chose these woods because they’re supposed to be spooky but this is out of control.” 

“Spooky? Spooky how?” 

Suddenly the queen seemed a little embarrassed. “I’m from Handel. We always used to joke about these woods being haunted. So a bunch of us wanted to host the Jubilee here because it was a little extra creepy, you know? It’s not like we’ve ever had any proof. It’s just stupid stories and stuff that we tell each other as kids.” 

"Any ghosts in particular?" Charlie attempted to play it cool but the queen sent her a sharp look. 

"Like...who exactly is supposed to be haunting the woods?" The queen snorted. "Uh nobody. Pretty sure some kid made it up." Her eyes dropped. “When you were queen, there were deaths.”

Charlie sighed. “Yes. Two of my guard. Good guys.”

“Is this the same thing? Are we cursed? Am I going to have to deal with bodies, or actual people dying on me?” The queen’s eyes widened and her breath came out in short little gasps. “Because I seriously did not sign up to give any actual fucking eulogies, you know? These are my people.” She settled her hands on the table and leaned over the pieces. “These are my friends. Should I call off the games? We’ve only got a few days left.”

Charlie pursed her lips. Instinct shouted at her to say yes. Call off the games. Get everyone out of here. Get them home safe in their beds. Except that her friends had died that year away from the game field - one at home in bed and the other in a police station. How much safer could they have been? In the end she simply said, “I’ll be in touch later today, okay?”

Charlie left the queen’s tent and made contact with the Shadow Orcs. If anybody there knew anything though, they weren’t telling. Instead she got the same general story that the queen had given her. Finally, as the night had entirely swung over the camp (chasing away some of her potential witnesses into the lit tents lining the encampment) Charlie called it a night.

Back at her hotel room she mulled over the interviews from the day. Ectoplasm in the ears. Rumors of haunted woods. Multiple dead or missing with no apparent causes. Her first step was definitely going to be researching possible ghosts. She opened another energy drink, cracked her knuckles, and settled into research mode.


	5. Charlie meets Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie has another dream and then scopes out a crime scene.

The doe stood at the end of Charlie’s bed, a soft glow falling from its pelt across the cartoonish lilypad covers. Charlie lifted her head, squinting against the light. “Whu?” The doe turned her head towards the door, looked back and fixed an eye on Charlie, and then walked gracefully right through the hotel room door, its rump disappearing before Charlie even had a chance to sit up. Charlie scrambled out of bed and ran to the door, throwing it wide. 

Outside, daylight drifted softly through a thick canopy of trees casting everything in a dreamy golden green light. _Ah_ , Charlie realized. _I’m dreaming_. This realization was somehow relaxing. Dreams were safe, after all. Dreams weren’t real. She stepped through the doorway, her feet making soft crunching noises as they began to fall on leaves instead of carpet. She followed the doe through the woods. Soon enough - immediately? (It was so hard to figure out time in dreams.) Soon enough they arrived at the oxbow stream which Charlie, in a flash of insight recalling the Queen of Moons’ map table earlier that evening, recognized as part of the stream that wandered through the forest preserve. Charlie tensed, expecting to see the shadow beast appear at any moment. Her hand clenched and she yearned for the warm wood of Eloidril. Her nails bit into her palms. But the beast didn’t appear.

Instead, the doe veered off away from the stream and back into the woods like a cue ball ricocheting off of a pool table. It picked up speed, haunches lifting as it began to bound through the trees. Charlie began to run. In her dream, she felt as light and nimble as a deer. She laughed and bounded after the doe. 

Charlie ran fast, but the doe ran slightly faster. Charlie fell further and further behind until the doe was just a spot of light bobbing through the trees. The glade thickened until at last Charlie broke through into a clearing free from the brambly underbrush. The doe stood in the clearing. Above the doe towered a tree. Charlie looked up at the canopy reaching out over nearly the entire clearing. Beneath it the doe pranced nervously, pawing at the ground. Charlie stood, reverently, afraid to move a muscle. She’d never been this close to her prey before, and suddenly felt grateful to not have her weapon on hand. Slowly, she twitched a few fingers as though to raise her palm as one might do for a strange dog. The doe jumped, literally jumped, and struck a hoof against the tree. Charlie stilled her hand immediately. _Sorry, sweetheart_ , she thought, too afraid to speak the words out loud. The doe jumped again and struck the tree. And then, suddenly, horrifyingly, the doe began to sink. Its hooves disappeared first, swallowed in dirt. Its legs soon followed. It struggled and looked at her, whipping its head, nostrils flared. After a shocked moment, Charlie rushed forward, hands outstretched. She’d pull it out, she’d save it. _Hold on, just hold on, baby._ The deer sank into the earth like plunging into water. Her nose lifted one more time, jerking up at the tree, and then she was gone. Charlie began to cry. No, crying was a simple term. Charlie began to sob huge racking sobs that shook her frame and rattled her heart. She knelt on the ground where the doe disappeared, pressed her face against the rough bark, and wept.

It was a while before she noticed something other than bark touching her skin. It felt smooth and cool, like glass as she rolled her forehead against it. She lifted her head and took a moment to furiously scrub out her eyes, blinking until she could see just a little bit. There was something metal in the bark, something silver and smooth and metal encased in the tree. She lifted her hand, eyes wide. This was the moment, right? That epic moment. She’d touch that object and some kind of truth or revelation would finally strike her like a meteor from the sky. 

Charlie woke up.

And then she groaned. Oooooh god she felt like shit. Sleep was supposed to help you feel better, not worse. She lifted her hands to her face and scrubbed at her eyes. Her palms came away wet. Great. She’d cried in her sleep. _Very stable, Charlie._ She lifted her head and peered at the foot of her bed, then around the room. No deer. Feeble light leaked in from under the thick motel curtains. Dawn, and early by the look of it. “Damn it.” Charlie sighed. “Might as well get up.”

Charlie took a long shower, her head resting against the cool tile as she just focused on finding her equilibrium. _Just breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Breathing is a miracle. There you go. Keep it up. Good girl, Charlie._

#

Charlie had just raided the motel’s extremely weak excuse for a continental breakfast (a basket of pre-packaged pastries, hot water, and a vat of crusty instant coffee) when she got the call. The police had found Tony Wu’s body and would she like to come out to the crime scene? Charlie hung up and cursed. Sam once told her that you only remembered the ones you couldn’t save. In her mental failure chart, Charlie added Tony’s file and hoped there wouldn’t be more before the end of this case. 

She got dressed, patting her pockets to make sure she had her FBI badge and Carrie IDs. Charlie looked at her bag of weapons. This probable ghost seemed to be killing someone pretty much daily so it would probably be wise to arm herself accordingly. Showing up at the crime scene with a sawed off shotgun was clearly out of the question. It was probably suspicious enough that she was bopping around on Dorothy’s bike. She huffed out a laugh. In hindsight, running around a small town on a classic motorcycle while telling everyone you were FBI was even more ludicrous than, well, doing the same in a ‘67 Impala. 

She slipped her EMF into a jacket pocket and stuck a little notebook in that pocket as well. Hopefully the notebook peeking out would keep odd looks from settling on the big boxy thing in her suit coat. _Just a pad of paper, people, nothing to see here._ Charlie made sure the shotgun was loaded with salt rounds then stowed it back into the black shoulder bag. She’d bring the bag with her, just in case. She checked the handgun and then hesitated. Where to put it? Charlie experimented with shoving it down the back of her pants. That just...didn’t seem safe at all. She shook her head. Why the hell didn’t hunters wear holsters? Right after this case she’d go out and buy a holster. And maybe some badass knife sheaths for strapping blades to her legs and hips. She stowed everything else in her room, hung the do not disturb sign, and headed out to the bike. On the way to the crime scene Charlie stopped to buy salt, lighter fluid, a box of matches, and a lighter. She stowed them in her weapons bag. Wouldn’t hurt to be prepared. 

As she rode out to the crime scene Charlie pondered her research from the night before. She actually had come across some promising could-be ghosts. The haunting the queen had referred to was easy to find. An urban myths blog attributed the rumors of haunted woods to Terrance Edwards, a young man who had taken his own life in the woods in 1976. Charlie had found one other possible prospect, at least in terms of proximity to the forest. In the 1920’s a woman was murdered at a farm down the road. Terrance Edwards seemed a likelier possibility simply due to dying in the forest, though she couldn’t quite pair his death (hanging from a tree branch) to the victims’ terrified death masks. She also hadn’t found any earlier news stories that seemed to match the current rash of mysterious deaths. If it was cyclical then she wasn't seeing the pattern. Not yet.

Ahead she spotted the telltale flashing lights of a police cruiser parked protectively near the crime scene. She slowed the motorcycle and parked it in the gravel shoulder just outside the police swarm. Charlie ducked under the crime scene tape and made a beeline for the body. 

Tony Wu’s body was wedged in a drain tube connecting deep ditches that ran on either side of a long driveway. From Charlie’s approach she could make out only the flats of his shoes, and only that much because there were two officers carefully bent over the tube and several others milling nearby setting little evidence markers in the grass. Charlie took a breath to steady herself and wondered if she would ever get used to seeing dead bodies. _That’s a person in there. A real, terrorized person who should not be dead._

Nick Nickel met her near the body. “Jogger found him this morning. Saw a ‘coon and that was enough to get her attention - raccoon in broad daylight and all just tearing away.” 

Charlie nodded and gulped against rising bile. “What do you think happened? Is he…”

“Like the others?” Nick waves a hand near his face and pulled a face. “Won’t know until we pull him out. But we can infer some things.” He crouched at the mouth of the tube and gestured to the muddy ground with a pencil. “First of all, only footprints we found are his. Leading all the way back to the edge of the woods over there. Lot of sliding. Looks like he ran over here. No mud or blood or hairs found on or around the tube. And the position of the legs and arms in there suggests to me that he crawled in there.” Charlie looked into the tube, past the sneakers. She could make out leather-clad legs folded into his torso and at least one arm wrapped around a knee like Tony had curled up into a little ball. His Shadow Orc robes were pushed behind him and tucked into the backs of his knees like he had carefully bunched every last piece of himself into the shelter of the tube.

“Like he was hiding,” said Charlie. _Like he was chased to this spot._ She turned that over in her mind. If he ran, was the ghost the chaser or the chasee? The other bodies had that telltale ectoplasm that screamed ghost possession. Could a terrified ghost have possessed the victims and taken them on a death run that mirrored their own demise? _Hmm._ The farm murder seemed to fit that theory a little better. _Better dig up both graves tonight, just to be on the safe side._ She started. _Oh, better scratch up a shovel, too._

“Everything okay?” Nick asked. “You have a theory?”

Charlie blinked at him, refocusing on his face. “Maybe.” _Not that you’ll ever believe it._ “Just considering a few things. I’ll let you know when I, uh, know.” She got up and walked up out of the ditch and over to the other side of the drainage tube. Casually Charlie pulled out her EMF and held it palmed between her hand and body. It didn’t emit so much as a beep. She frowned and brought the EMF all the way to the ground and into the tube. She tried, out of long habit, just switching it off and on again. _Nothing._

Across the street a sensible gray sedan pulled up and parked on the steeply sloped opposite shoulder. The doors opened and a man and woman stepped out wearing suits only a shade darker than the car. One wore sunglasses and looked utterly humorless. The other pulled out something from his coat and flashed it an an approaching police officer. Charlie watched them, suddenly wary. _Frak._ The real FBI had arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, okay. I know these chapters are short but this one is actually part 1 of a longer chapter, technically. Posting part 2 soon! Story is starting to heat up and we're getting to my favorite bits. Halfway!
> 
> Witness as I learn to write fiction. Thank you a billion times for reading :)


	6. Charlie pets a tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie investigates some crime scenes and develops an interest in arborial science.

Charlie shot up from her crouch and jammed the EMF back into her pocket. She peered at the car, assessing all the new arrivals. From where she stood, these FBI agents looked legit. Or rather, nothing about them looked off. Their car alone, in Charlie’s experience, was both too nice and too boring to belong to a hunter. She climbed out of the ditch and inched back into the gaggle of police inside the tape so she could get a good look at the plates. _US government issue. Great._

The officer who had gone over to greet the two agents led them across the street towards the crime scene. She saw them catch Nick’s attention and busied herself looking at the little evidence markers on the ground. What would Sam and Dean do? They wouldn’t run, that she knew for sure. Fleeing right now would scream guilt and it wasn’t exactly like she traveled inconspicuously. 

Right. She’d just have to bluff her way through this. No biggie. It wasn’t long before she heard footsteps approach. “Agent?”

Charlie stood, a little too quickly, and smiled her brightest smile. “Agent. Uh, hi.” The two FBI agents towered over her on the upper slope of the ditch where she had crouched, staring blindly at an evidence marker. “Uh, glad you’re here, agents…?”

The male agent stepped forward, flapping open his badge with one hand and reaching out with the other. “Agent Anders and this is my partner Jackel.” Jackel nodded, her face impassive behind her sunglasses. “And you are?”

“Agent Ripley.” She flashed her badge quickly and made a move to put it away in her pocket again, but Jackel snatched it from her. Hesitantly, Charlie shook Anders’ hand while staring at her badge in his partner’s hand. “Uh, nice to meet you too.” The other agent scrutinized the badge for a long time. _Too long, oh no ooooooh no,_ thought Charlie. The bike did not start up that fast. She needed a getaway... _tesseract_...like, now.

Jackel looked at Charlie and her partner looked at her, his affable smile beginning to slip. “You’re out of the DC office, right?” 

Charlie grasped onto that. “Yes! DC office.” _Shields up, Charlie._ She smiled broadly. “On vacation out here. Visiting family. Family reunion! Lots of...boating.” _Get back on track._ “My supervisor gave me a head’s up. Thought I’d check it out.” She bopped her head. _Ugh. Queen of smooth._

The Jackel (because really, this agent scared Charlie down to her toes) pursed her lips then handed Charlie back her badge. “What’s your read on the case?”

“Ah! Uh, still gathering evidence.” She could see the Jackel’s eyebrows raising above her sunglasses. “Um, two of the vics have connections through the game. They’re both Shadow Orcs.” The eyebrows quirked. “They’re on the same team, basically. In this game. The first vic doesn’t seem connected, except that they’re all occurring in and around this forest.” Charlie gestured to the woods. “No clear cause of death but...” What was she supposed to say? _I think it’s a vengeful spirit?_ “But I think there’s something going on here anyway. Likely localized to the forest. So...” 

“So it’s time to get to work,” Jackel said smoothly. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a card then handed it to Charlie. “Call me if you need anything.” Her mouth quirked. “Ripley.” 

The agents turned away then and headed back to speak with Nickels. Charlie remembered to breathe and stowed her badge, overwhelmed by her luck. She thought she had been caught for sure. Right. Time to get to work, indeed. 

Charlie kick started the motorcycle and drove down the rural lane, making a left to get onto the road that opened onto Happy Valley park. The day was still young. She’d spend the morning checking the woods and see if she could narrow down her ghost suspect before nightfall. She really, really hated digging graves. 

Charlie parked the bike near the trail map and shrugged out of her suit jacket, stuffing it into one of the panniers. If she was going to go all Sondheim then she was going to do it comfortably. She ran a hand over the back of her shirt to ensure that it covered the pistol grip and headed into the woods. 

#

Charlie had a GPS app on her phone - a remnant from a brief obsession with geocaching. The prior night she had downloaded maps of the forest preserve and she pulled those up now, activating the trail layer and entering the coordinates for the Aiken crime scene. “Okay,” she muttered. “Take the trail out this way, hang a left at the fork and go off trail just after the stream crossing. I can do this. Easy.”

It was a fairy tale beautiful morning complete with a clear blue sky and birds singing in the nearby trees. Despite this, the forest felt wrong to Charlie. Dark. Charlie itched to pull out the shotgun but she was still on the public trail. She contented herself with clenching a handful of salt and a thin iron spire which could easily be concealed against her forearm in a pinch. The trails seemed empty. Even so, Charlie waited to pull out her projectile weaponry and the dread grew like tubers in her gut. 

She finally reached the stream crossing and consulted her phone again. Forty feet down the path and then off the trail. A little cross country walk and she'd be there. She reached the turnoff and stopped to pull out the shotgun. The iron spire went in her back pocket and she shoveled the handful of salt into another pocket of her jeans, giving herself a heavy salt dusting while she was at it. _Hmm, salt-permeated hunting suit. Interesting idea._

_Focus, Charlie._

Once off trail Charlie used her phone to navigate, the shotgun held in her other hand. “Remember,” she muttered. “A ghost rushes you and you drop the phone first.” She crested a hill only to pause as deja vu settled over her like a mantle.

“Balls,” she said as she took in the view. The thickets, the trees, the stream. _The oxbow stream._ From her current vantage point the stream that wound through the forest preserve appeared to loop in and out of the woods, disappearing on both ends and turning the opposite bank into an illusion of an island. In her dreams, she looked out over this view - or something awfully similar to it - clutching Eloidril. 

Charlie squinted ahead through the trees which, okay, were actually a little thicker than her dreams. She half expected to see the doe come walking up at any moment, though that would mean… Charlie glanced at the opposite bank warily then hefted the shotgun into a ready position. “Okay. Everything...everything’s cool. Let’s go.” 

A wide circle around the stream bend showed evidence of a crime scene investigation. The ground was thoroughly trampled around the perimeter of the area with fewer footprints near the stream where the body had been found. A freshly worn path led from the little area by the stream away into the woods. _Where did that go?_ She checked the map, toggling between the layers. Ah, there was a service road nearby that was missing from the trail layer. “Well, that would have been a better way in. Ah, well.” Charlie sighed, set down her bag, and got to work. 

The EMF, just like with Tony’s body, refused to register anything definitive. After twenty increasingly frustrating minutes of gently poking through foliage for ectoplasm, ghostly artifacts, or literally any kind of clue at all, Charlie was ready to call it. She stood, cracked her back, and packed up her weapons bag. “Good job, Hammerspace,” she said patting it absentmindedly and staring off into the trees. She slung it over her shoulder and picked up the shotgun. Surely… Surely it wouldn’t hurt to just take a little stroll through the woods. This stream reminded her so strongly of her dreams, like her post-resurrection dreams had just been an exaggerated artist rendering of this one little state forest. Charlie stowed her phone in her pocket and set off into the woods, following an imaginary doe. 

#

Charlie knew she found the tree before she even saw it. She followed no trail, only instinct and memory, to a section of forest that appeared as though it had been blasted. Shredded tree bark and splinters of wood lay over the undergrowth, with still-green leaves scattered like a blanket over everything. Charlie made her way over an entire recently fallen tree trunk, its canopy still green and incredibly tall, its roots stretching taller than two Charlies stacked on top of each other. On the other side of these uprooted trees in a circular clearing so fresh it was nothing but blasted earth and shredded root, Charlie found the tree from her dream. 

She stood at the edge of the clearing for a while and just stared, craning her neck to look above at the thick canopy which stretched almost the entire span of the clearing. It was an oak tree with wide spreading branches and wide spreading roots that tumbled over the freshly churned soil. Charlie half knelt and picked up a clump of dirt. It crumbled easily in her hands. “Incredible. It’s like you grew overnight,” she told the tree, rubbing a nearby root as someone might rub the leg of a beloved pet. She looked around her at the circle of destruction just outside of the clearing. “And you blasted out everything in your way.” 

She sighed and looked down at the shotgun in her arms. “No way a ghost could do this. No way.” What did this mean for this case? She had been so sure that ghosts were involved. What did a Jack-in-the-Beanstalk style tree have to do with three dead bodies? 

Nearby, someone screamed. Charlie jumped and pulled up her shotgun, swiveling so the tree was at her back. Where? 

Another scream. Charlie once again let instinct control her feet. She flew towards the screams, shotgun clenched in her fist as casually as though it had been a long, wooden bow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. I had no plans to write Agent Jackel but I'm so glad I did. She needs her own comic book. She might...never remove those shades.


	7. Charlie saves the queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie saves the queen from a hidden threat.

Charlie hated running. If there was one thing she loathed about Oz (aside from the horrific warfare) it was all the foot travel. Oz had honed her body hard and lean and she’d kept some of that after she returned to the world. Still, running twisted her body into knots. 

But there was somebody screaming in the woods, so Charlie ran. 

Downed wood littered the ground and branches and raspberry brambles caught at her ankles and beat her around the shins. The scream sounded again and Charlie made a course correction and tried not to trip and end up with a salt round blast to the face. 

The scream was high and rough and on the move. The screamer was running - just like Sadie and Tony before they’d died. Ahead of her now she could see a blur of movement as a solo figure fled down the wide interpretive trail that bisected the forest. "Hey!" Charlie called. "Where is it?" The runner turned her head and Charlie experienced a jolt as she recognized the Queen of Moons. The queen must have been startled as well. With her eyes off the trail she promptly stumbled and fell, skidding on the gravel path. Charlie sprinted to her side and raised the shotgun, pointing it wildly. “Where is it?" Charlie gasped. “Where is it?”

The queen pointed down the trail, scrambling backwards, crablike, as she tried to regain her footing. Charlie looked in the direction of her shaking hand. There was nothing there but trees and sunshine. "Where?" Charlie asked again, training the shotgun down the path. 

"Right there," shouted the queen as she scrambled up. "Can't you see it?"

No, Charlie couldn't see it. That didn't mean she couldn't still shoot at it, though. She fired the shotgun once, twice, three times, before the queen gasped behind her. "It just disappeared. Where did it go?"

Charlie shook her head and grabbed at the queen's hand. "Don't know. Better run." They ran down the trail together, both of them looking back nervously every few minutes. Charlie steeled herself for whatever the queen had seen to manifest itself suddenly but it never appeared.

They stopped running once they reached the parking lot. Charlie doubled over, clutching her ribs as she tried to ease the stitch in her side. She looked over at the queen who panted against a signpost and looked back at the wall of trees. “See it?” she managed to gasp. “Is it here?”

“No.” The queen pushed at her hair and looked around. Charlie straightened and stood beside her. “You sure?” At the queen’s assent she continued, “What did you see? What was chasing you?”

“You didn’t see anything?” The queen’s eyes were wide.

Charlie raised both hands in apology. “Hey. I believe you saw something just like I believe that Sadie and Tony and Nancy saw something before-” At the look on the queen’s face Charlie abruptly dropped that line of thought. “I believe you, no matter what. Tell me what you saw. Trust me, please.” She sighed, awareness that they now stood in a public parking lot making her drop the shotgun self-consciously to her side. “I’m sorry. I never got your name.”

“Andrea.” The queen wiped at her face, composure already returning. She, too, seemed to be aware of their public location because she started looking around the parking lot rather than at the woods. “And I did see something...unbelievable.” Her pocket began to jangle and she reached down and pulled out a phone. Her eyes widened when she looked at the lock screen. She held out a finger to Charlie and answered it.

Charlie waited, sweat crusting on her skin, shotgun in hand. _Well. This is getting awkward. Guess I’ll...put away the gun._ She unslung Hammerspace from her shoulder and laid it on the ground, unzipping it and placing the shotgun inside. She didn’t zip it, just in case the monster showed. Instead, she hung it over one shoulder and rested her hand on the gun, barrel pointed towards the trees. 

Andrea talked rapidly with the person on the other line. “Next time you just leave,” Charlie overheard, “just friggin’ tell someone, okay? Okay. Good. Alright, you take care of yourself, hon. No. I understand. Talk to you later.” Andrea groaned and hung up the phone. She looked at Charlie and waved the phone around like a court exhibit before putting it back in her pocket. “Long story. Listen, thank you. For whatever it was that happened out there. I need to put myself back together and just like, get my bearings.”

Charlie gaped. “Get your bearings,” she parroted. “Sure. Well, um first things first. Care to tell me what the hell I shot at back there?” She couldn’t help it. Her voice ratcheted up. 

Andrea shook her head. “Don’t know.” She laughed shortly. “I seriously don’t know. I probably just imagined it?” She put a hand to her head. “I’m probably super sleep deprived-”

Charlie interrupted. “Look, what you saw - what I fraking shot at - was real. I believe that with every last part of my being and I think you do too. I mean,” said Charlie screwing her face up. “I don’t want to be all ‘come with me if you want to live' but...maybe you should come with me if you want to live? We don’t know anything about what’s been killing people, right now you’re the reigning queen of no information, and I just shot at something invisible. Which. Seriously? Invisible monsters?”

“Monsters.” Andrea drew out the word, her focus suddenly on Charlie. She was silent for a long while. “Okay.” She tilted her head finally. “Okay. Monsters. You. Me. Back to my tent. We need to talk - and not out here.” 

Charlie let the current queen take the lead through the passel of Moondoor tents. She strolled beside her, head held high, daring anyone to ask about their disheveled appearance. At her tent, Andrea whispered to a middle aged woman who stood attendance at the door. Then she beckoned Charlie inside. 

“I told her to give us some privacy.” Andrea flipped down a swiveling mirror and began to arrange her braids. She looked at Charlie out of the corner of her eye. “You’re right. I did see something out there.” Putting her hair back together was a quick task. With her hair swept up and the tear streaks wiped from her face, Andrea seemed to radiate composure. This was belied by the tremble in her voice as she began her story. 

“One of my handmaidens disappeared this morning. She’s super reliable, always on time. She was supposed to lead the broadsword demo this morning but never showed. I just had a bad feeling about it. She wasn’t answering her phone so I went looking for her. We’ve had two weird deaths this week and I just thought...oh my god. She’s in the woods getting killed.” She sat on the bed and Charlie perched on a chair, balancing Hammerspace on her lap. 

“So I go out there and, you know, I find nothing. No hikers, no handmaidens, not anyone. Even the Orcs have been good about steering clear of the woods. And then all of a sudden there’s this…” Andrea shuddered and closed her eyes. Her hands balled in her lap. “There’s this thing in the trail. It’s like…” She shook her head. “It’s hard to explain.” 

“Try me,” urged Charlie.

“It was like a shadow. Like, a huge weird shadow. I don’t mean it was black or whatever. It was like an absence of light, almost? Like a black hole with legs. I couldn’t see through it but it didn’t seem to be anything, um, substantial? And these huge claws just reached out. So I ran. And then there you were. You shot at it and it disappeared. Is it dead?”

Charlie shook her head. “Probably not. But I have no fraking clue what it is.” Invisible and at the same time not invisible, with long claws. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You haven’t been dreaming about it or anything, have you?”

Andrea looked started. “What? No.” She snorted. “I mean, I probably will now.” 

“Yeah.” The two women sat in silence for a moment.

“That was her calling out by the parking lot, by the way. My missing handmaiden. She went home. Sadie’s death really shook her up. And with Tony missing-” She broke off, reading Charlie’s face. “Oh no. He’s...he’s not missing, is he?”

“They found his body this morning. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The queen slowly shook her head, mouth trembling. “I’m canceling the final battle of the Jubilee.” 

Charlie nodded. “Probably a good idea,” she said gently. 

“People are gonna be pissed.”

“Maybe. But hopefully they’ll be alive.” 

“Can I? Should I tell them about Tony?”

Charlie nodded. Mysterious trees, clawed shadows, her own prophetic dreams? Whatever was going on, people needed to get the hell away from this forest. Maybe even away from her. “I’m sorry I told you to stay.” 

Andrea nodded, her mouth pinched. 

“I’m going to figure this out, alright? I’ll stop this.” Charlie drew a line in the air with the blade of her hand. “No more deaths, okay? But Andrea? Stay out of the woods.”

Andrea shivered. “No worries there. Where are you headed? Are you going to tell the police?”

Charlie sighed. “Listen, I’m not actually with the police. I’m here to, ah, hunt this monster. That’s not exactly something the police understand.” God, that sounded so fake out loud. “The cops’ll probably come around. Those gunshots aren’t gonna be ignored.” Not here in a suburban park, anyway. “Best if you don’t mention me.” 

Andrea held her gaze for a moment, then slowly nodded. As the queen headed out to close down the Jubilee, Charlie went back to her motorcycle. She’d rather hunt this thing in the broad daylight but those shotgun blasts in the middle of a suburban forest really had likely drawn a sizable contingent of police to the park. Besides, it was time to hit the metaphorical books and see if the Internet could give her any clues about what she was facing. 

Back at her hotel, Charlie dove into the lore. “Okay, Charlie,” she told herself as she cracked her knuckles, “let’s start with what you know. One. There’s a monster in the woods that can kill without leaving a mark. Two. Not everybody can see it. Maybe just its intended victim? Hmmm.” She typed ‘invisible monster claws’ and hit search. The results were predictably bad. Charlie moaned. “I miss the bunker library.

“Three. Salt rounds seemed to have scared the monster off so...kind of like a spirit?” Could ghosts appear in a non-human form? Charlie shook her head. “But that doesn’t explain fact number four: the super weird tree in the middle of the woods.” _Or my dreams. Especially my dreams. You’re the link, Charlie._ The thought drifted up and Charlie shivered and pushed it back down. 

Researching magical trees naturally led her to fairy lore, a possibility she had been trying to ignore. Charlie sat back on the bed, rubbing her forehead and mulling over the possibility. Gilda had been beautiful and kind, like a star fallen to earth. But she had also been incredibly powerful, wielding incomprehensible magic as comfortably as breathing. That level of magic was something Charlie had only experienced one other time - in Oz - and she had to split her soul to defeat it. 

If this was some kind of dark fairy monster she didn’t have the first clue as to how to kill it. After encountering Gilda she’d done quite a lot of research, of course. The Men of Letters bunker had several books and white papers on fairy kind. Fairies could go invisible at will, which could explain how some people ran in terror while others, like herself, saw nothing at all. If it was a dark fairy lurking in the forest selectively showing itself to people, there actually might be a way to see it. In her research she’d found a couplet scrawled in the margins of a text that discussed fae invisibility. Charlie closed her eyes, recalling it. 

_Royal circlet, lift the veil  
Warrior’s blade shall prevail._

Charlie was almost certain that it meant a royal crown could be used - somehow - to lift a fae’s invisibility. Ozma had given Dorothy spectacles during her first visit to Oz - spectacles made from a melted crown from the ruler of the Paddlegum Kingdom. As Dorothy had ruefully informed Charlie, a flying monkey had stolen them not long after. Ozma had never been willing to give her another pair. “I wonder,” mused Charlie aloud, “where the hell I can find a crown? Or some magic glasses?” She giggled but when it wobbled into a sob she tamped it down as well. 

Cicadas droned outside her window in the late afternoon sun. Charlie stood and walked to her weapons bag, unzipped it, and emptied it on the bed. Weapons check time. The crime scene should be wrapped by now, the Jubilee revelers gone. It was time to hunt before all the lies caught up to her.


	8. Charlie finds a tattoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie and the queen gear up.

Charlie had barely set all the weaponry out on the bed when there was a knock on the door. She cautiously peered out the window and saw Andrea standing on the hotel walkway, nervously shifting from side to side. Charlie opened the door. “Um, hey.” 

“Can I come in?” Andrea’s voice was high. She seemed more rattled than when Charlie had left her just after their frantic run through the woods. 

“Sure?” Charlie stood back and let the woman in. The bed was full of knives and guns but Charlie figured they were through the looking glass now. She quickly closed the door. “So…” She eyed the queen. Andrea paced the room, hands jammed in jean pockets. “What's this about? And...wait. How’d you find me?” 

Andrea stopped her pacing to look at Charlie. “Well, you’re not exactly inconspicuous are you? I have a cousin who works at the station. Recognized your bike.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean, it’s not every day FBI shows up in Handel. Or...fake FBI? Ugh, whatever. This is important, Carrie. I saw it again.”

“What? Where? I thought you were going to stay out of the woods!”

“I did! It took a while to pack everything up because there’s so much crap that Moondoor hauls around and the trucks aren’t actually scheduled until tomorrow. But I stayed in the camp the whole time, I swear. Everything was fine until I was getting into my car. And I saw it. By the edge of the woods. Lurking.”

“You actually saw it? What was it doing?”

“Didn't you hear me? Lurking! Like, waiting for me, I think. To- To finish the job. Anyway, I got in my car and got the hell out of there. But Carrie, it followed me out of the woods. I'm sure of it. What if it follows me home?”

Charlie flopped on the bed and massaged her temples. “Did anyone else see it?”

“No, I don’t think so. Most people had cleared out by that point.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I wanted to make sure everyone got out alright. Carrie, I’m scared to go home.”

“Okay. Okay! It’s alright,” said Charlie confidently, her guts twisting. God, solo hunts sucked. “You can stay here. It’s fine.” She pulled the salt container off the bed. “If you, ah, just sit in this chair here.” Charlie kicked one of the wooden hotel chairs to the middle of the floor. “I’ll pour salt around it.” At the queen’s raised eyebrows she clarified, “salt shotgun pellets were what chased that thing off in the first place. We’ll sit you In a circle of salt and it shouldn’t be able to get to you even if it does find you.”

Andrea frowned. “So I’ll just sit here then? I can’t sit in a...freaking salt circle my whole life.”

“I’m heading out to hunt this thing now. If-” Charlie took a deep breath. “When I succeed you’re free to go. Until then, stay in the circle.” She opened the container and started to pour when Andrea grabbed her wrist. 

Charlie blinked in surprise. “It’s just salt. It-”

“You’re going alone?”

“Well, yeah.” Charlie snorted. “See anyone else around who can do it? Do the police do this kind of work? The real FBI? It’s down to me. I’m the one responsible. I’m going to take this sucker down.”

“But you can’t even see it.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

Andrea looked ashen but said, “I’ll go with you.” 

Charlie laughed. “Um, no you will not. You don't know the first thing about any of this and you don’t want to, trust me. This kind of work? It’s dirty. It’s bloody. And it usually just gets you killed.” She laughed bitterly. “Believe me, you’re better off here.”

“Better off? Alone surrounded by a condiment? No, thank you. This fucker is after me. I can feel it, Carrie. It’s coming for me. I am not going to fucking sit around and wait to die!”

Charlie watched her for a moment, thinking. It was true. She didn’t have backup. She didn’t have anyone. And she really, really, couldn’t see that damn monster. Finally, she nodded. “Fine. But you follow my lead and stay behind me. You ever shoot a gun?”

“A pellet gun. At camp?”

Charlie sighed and shook her head, then handed over a weapon anyway, showing her the basic functions. “Just don’t point it at me, please.” It would sure be nice to survive for at least a week after her resurrection.

“So you’re hunting this thing, right? Have you been stalking it for long?” Andrea's voice was thin but her eyes looked a little less wild now that there was some kind of plan taking shape. 

“Stalking it?” Charlie had to smile a little at that. “Elmer Fudd style? No, It’s only been the past few days. I...heard about the deaths. Made the trip here to check it out. It was just really close to home, you know?” She loaded the shotgun, considering her words carefully. “It’s been a strange week for me, but being here in some ways, it's like a homecoming. Like I’m connected. Like I was pulled back here for a reason. Does that make sense?” She began to toss weapons into the bag again, tucking a knife into her belt and then tying her hair up into a ponytail. 

“I think I get that,” said Andrea softly. They were quiet for a while as Charlie nervously checked her gear again, pulling it all out and setting it back in the bag, one at a time. “Hey,” she said suddenly. “Nice tattoo. That’s super pretty. Did you get it done around here?” 

“What?” Charlie laughed.

Andrea cracked a smile. “I know. Random thing with all this doom hanging over me, and all. Just nervous, I guess. Easier than asking about, you know, this freaking sword you’ve got in your bag.”

Charlie’s smile died. “Are you serious? What tattoo?” She looked sharply at the queen.

“The one on the back of your neck.”

Charlie slapped her hand on her neck, rubbing at the skin. “I don’t. I never.” She jumped for the mirror over the dresser, twisting her body and head awkwardly trying to see whatever Andrea saw.

“Whoa, whoa. Hold on. Let me take a picture for you.” Charlie forced herself to stand still as Andrea pulled out her phone and took a photo. She held phone in front of Charlie. In the middle of Charlie's neck, just under the hairline, bloomed a tree. It was black with thick, wide roots spreading like veins across her skin, topped with wide arching branches covered in tiny, exquisitely detailed leaves.

Charlie’s mouth dropped open in horror. “Oh. That’s. Are your ears ringing? I hear ringing.” She fumbled for the edge of the dresser and felt Andrea catch at her elbow and lead her to the edge of the bed.

“Do you...not remember getting it? That sucks.”

“No,” Charlie whispered. “I don’t remember getting it.” She looked at Andrea then sprang up and grabbed Hammerspace and the shotgun. “Stay here,” she said. “Make a salt circle and sit your butt in it. Don’t move. Shoot anything that comes through the door.”

“What-?”

“Anything! I don't care if it’s John Snow himself. You shoot it.”

“Where are you going?”

“To take this thing down.” She flinched away from Andrea’s outstretched hand. “Alone.”

Andrea jumped up. “Look, you want to clear something up for me here? One minute I’m coming along because, oh yeah, I’m the only friggin’ person you know right now that can see this thing… And the next you’re heading off Rambo style? Care to clue me in? What’s the deal with this little tree tat?” She waved her phone.

Charlie’s mouth trembled. All the confusion and loneliness of the past few days coalesced. She could feel tears approaching and dug her fingernails into her hand, hard. “That,” she said in a flat tone, “is a mark of fairy magic.”

Andrea’s inquisitive expression went blank. “Fairy magic.” She repeated. “Fairy.”

Charlie nodded miserably.

“As in la-di-da here’s some money for your teeth, fairy.”

“Yeah, well no. I don’t know. Maybe?” Charlie shook her head, her mind a jumble. She took a long, slow breath. “You have to understand. When I was queen, two people were killed. A lot more were injured. Every victim got marked with a tree tattoo right before they got hurt. There was a fairy doing it. Well, she was being controlled by this guy Boltar who was taking the game way too seriously. Um. Anyway. The point is, this tree tattoo is a mark of fairy magic. And trust me, in my experience it’s never good.” A thought occurred to her. “Not to make this super awkward, but before I go we’d better check you.”

Andrea laughed. “For a tree tattoo.”

“Yes.”

“I’d know if I had one.”

Charlie rolled her eyes. “Just. Check, please. Okay?”

Andrea nodded slowly, the way one might nod to an emotional toddler. She showed Charlie the tattoo on her forearm - a celtic dragon - then checked what she could before quietly turning to let Charlie check her shoulders and back. “All clear?”

Charlie frowned. “All clear.”

“Well? That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yeah.” Charlie ran a hand along her neck again. It really was fairy magic and she was a marked woman. What a fantastic parade of shit. She reached for the door handle. 

Andrea followed her then rolled her eyes when Charlie shook her head. “Why are you suddenly so against me going?”

“Why are you suddenly so for going? You stick with me and you could die. Especially now, seeing this.” Charlie pointed to her neck. “This is all because of me. I’m connected to it, somehow. I know it. I mean, I suspected it but I didn’t want to accept it.” She grunted in frustration. ”Don’t you get it? I’m responsible for these deaths. It’s on me. It's all on me.”

“No, it’s not.” Andrea drew herself up and Charlie recognized the queen pose. “This is my goddamn town, in case you forget. And there’s a freaky ass shadow monster after me. So, yeah. I’m going with you. I’ll be the eyes. You be the...fists. And we’ll kick this thing’s ass.”

The hotel room was quiet for a while, save for the lazy cicada drone outside the window. Charlie nodded reluctantly, an echo of Dorothy’s pragmatism leaking in. She did need Andrea, really. Andrea could see the monster - had seen it twice. The thing was either stalking her or she had some kind of weird ability that, well, Charlie didn’t have the energy to try to understand at the moment. “Okay, fine. We’ll take your car.”

Andrea nodded and palmed the pistol, then fished car keys out of her pocket. 

“By any chance, local girl,” Charlie asked, “do you happen to know where I could find a silver knife?”


	9. Charlie finds a sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie and Andrea head into the woods. Into the woods... Into the woods with a monster.
> 
> Always a great idea.

Andrea drove to her own home and disappeared inside for a few minutes. When she emerged, she carried something wrapped in pink tissue paper. She slid back into the car and thrust it at Charlie. “Silver knife,” she said shortly.

Charlie unwrapped the package. The tissue paper was old and faded on the outside, vivid pink on the inside where sun clearly rarely shone. She picked up the silver cake knife from the package. It still had a pink silk ribbon tied around the handle. Charlie fingered the ribbon. “Um.”

“I hope that works. My baptism cake knife. It’s not crazy sharp, though I always thought it was unreasonably sharp for cake. But it’s silver for sure.” She sighed. “Otherwise I really don’t know where we’d find one at this time of day.” 

_We’re screwed._ “No, that’s okay,” said Charlie. “Mind if I ditch the ribbon, though?”

Andrea laughed. “Sure, go ahead.” 

They drove in silence toward Happy Valley. Charlie directed Andrea to the access road and quietly told her about the tree, and her theory about dark fairy magic. “We’ll shortcut our way to the tree. We’ll have an easy out if we need to run for it.”

They parked in the grassy road as the sun hovered just over the trees. As they were getting out of the car, a glint of gold caught Charlie’s eye from Andrea’s back seat. “Hey is that the Forever Crown?” she asked, a corner of her mouth quirking up. 

“Yeah.” Andrea reached in and flipped her cloak over to cover it up.

“Royal circlet...” Charlie muttered, then looked at Andrea. “Can I?”

Andrea stood slowly, looking anxiously at the setting sun. “Shouldn’t we be going? Being in these woods at night is at the very top of my Things Not to Do list.”

“Dude. I just had an idea.” Charlie gripped the crown in one hand, holding it up like a magnifying glass. She grinned at Andrea. “I might be able to use this to see what’s been stalking you. Looking through a royal circlet might reveal hidden fairies. And, I mean, it is technically...” 

“A royal crown,” finished Andrea. She looked flabbergasted but ultimately held up both hands, palms out. “Whatever. Can we just get going?” Together they headed into the woods, Charlie holding up the crown and looking through it as they walked. 

The clearing was empty, save for the tree. Charlie didn’t know why she expected anything different. She paused at the edge of the clearing and scanned it. Looking through the crown felt like looking through a pair of novelty sunglasses. The shape of the world was off, set into disarray by the spires of the crown. As she passed the crown over the tree trunk one more time, something moved. “What was that?” Charlie whispered. 

“What was what?” Andrea pressed against Charlie’s back. Charlie could feel her trembling. 

Charlie slowly advanced, one hand holding the crown and the other wedging the shotgun into her side, finger on the trigger. _Shooting from the hip,_ Charlie thought fighting a crazed urge to giggle. Behind the tree, something glimmered.

Slowly, gracefully, the doe from Charlie’s dreams rounded the tree. Charlie stopped. “Holy shit. On a cracker.”

“What?” Gasped Andrea.

“You can’t see that?” Charlie pointed with the shotgun. “The deer?”

“No,” Andrea said, voice low and slow. Worried. 

“C’mere. Look through the crown.”

“Look through the-” Charlie heard Andrea sigh and felt her lean over her shoulder to peer through the crown. The woman gripped Charlie’s shoulder, digging her fingers into the muscle. “Holy. Shit.”

“Yeah.” Charlie felt a weight leave her chest at the sight of the glowing animal. She walked toward the deer to where it stood beneath the tree, ears twitching, eyes trained precisely on the advancing women. “Hey, beautiful,” Charlie breathed. “I didn’t think you’d be real too.” Experimentally, she lowered the crown and the doe disappeared. Raising it again, she could see the doe perfectly, framed in the fake gold spires. “Andrea,” she said. “Take the shotgun.”

“Me?”

“Take the shotgun. I need my hand free.” Charlie felt Andrea take the gun from the crook of her arm and she held out her hand carefully, as she would do for a skittish animal. The doe dipped her head to Charlie’s hand, warming it as they touched. Then she dropped her nose straight through Charlie's hand. 

Charlie flinched then moved the crown to follow and saw the doe pawing at the ground. Deja vu once settled around her like a lead apron. She’d been here before. In her dream this is where the doe drowned in dirt. The doe pawed at the loose earth but stayed firmly anchored to the ground. Charlie dropped to her knees. “Dig?” she asked the doe. "You want me to dig?" The animal dipped her head enthusiastically. “That’s a yes. Andrea, help me dig.”

Andrea made a noise halfway between a moan and a grunt. “Dig? What about the monster out there? Hunting me?”

“This is important.” Charlie scrabbled at the dirt with her bare hands, then realized she could scoop more efficiently with the crown. “I know it. It’s important. It has to be. I’ve been dreaming about this.” Reluctantly, Andrea settled next to her and began to dig with her fingers as well. Almost instantly she squealed and pulled back. 

“Oh my god fingers fingers fingers,” she wailed.

Charlie looked. Andrea had uncovered a dirt encrusted hand, fingers curled slightly towards the surface. Charlie flung herself into digging, throwing a glare up at her horrified hunting partner until Andrea bent forward again. Together they unearthed an arm, a torso, long blond hair tangling through the earth like worms, a familiar face.

“Gilda?” Charlie gasped and frantically scrabbled at the dirt around the fairy’s face, neck, shoulders. She caressed the still cheek. “Gilda? Can you hear me?” The fairy was pale, motionless, dirt still gathered in the crevices around her mouth and eyes and crusted in her hair. 

“What the fucking fuck.” Andrea sat back on her heels, eyes saucer wide. 

“Keep digging,” Charlie hissed at her, breath hitching back a sob. She continued to softly pat Gilda’s face. Was it just her imagination? Did Gilda feel a little warm? Did fairies need to breathe? “Gilda,” Charlie moaned. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

They uncovered the fairy quickly. She lay in what resembled a shallow grave, just a few inches below the surface, braced between two massive buckling roots. The loose soil hadn’t been heavily packed down as though she had only been there for a handful of days. Her dress tangled in the dirt and an uncomfortable amount of nightcrawlers writhed in the shallow soil they had mounded around her body. The sun continued to set as they dug and the trees faded from golden green to twilit greys and blues. 

“Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” Charlie whispered a litany as she lifted Gilda from her shallow grave. She looked at Andrea. “New plan. We’re getting out of here with her while we still have some light. We’ll carpet bomb my hotel room in salt. Whatever it takes. And try again tomorrow. Okay?”

“Oh, I’m so on board with getting out of here,” said Andrea. She bent over to grab Gilda’s other arm and froze, looking across Charlie. “Shit.”

Charlie lowered Gilda to the ground again and turned to look where Andrea was staring. There was nothing there. Keeping her eyes trained on the woods she fumbled for the crown. As she moved it up the crown showed her roots, then grasses, then something long and dark skulking at the edge of the clearing. Long scythelike claws stood out in sharp relief from the rest of its body. “Great,” muttered Charlie. “New, new plan.”

“Yeah?”

“We shoot our way out and hope for the best.” She reached for the shotgun and propped it against her hip, careful to keep the crown trained on the monster. Against the woods, the creature shifted like a bad video game character, slightly out of sync with its surroundings. A loud crack echoed through the trees. Through the crown she saw the shadow ripple, like the shotgun blast was a stone cast into a pool. The ripples smoothed away.

“Uh, still there,” said Andrea. “Shit, Carrie. It’s still there!”

“I know,” hissed Charlie. She blasted it three more times. “It’s just standing there,” she said. “What the hell?” 

“Maybe you just surprised it before. Maybe salt doesn’t hurt it.”

“Yeah, you think?” Charlie handed the shotgun to Andrea and slipped out the silver knife. “Keep an eye on it, alright? Tell me if it moves.” With Andrea watching the creature Charlie slipped off Hammerspace and dropped it to the ground. “Horrible, creepy claws versus cake knife. This is gonna go great. Listen. Andrea. I’m going to rush this thing and try to distract it. You just run like hell, okay? Make a run for your car and get out of here.” 

“I can’t just leave you,” Andrea said weakly, sounding very much as if she could.

“Oh yes, you can. This isn’t your fight.” Charlie stood over Gilda, knife clenched in her hand. Through the crown’s circle, the shadow shifted, waiting.

“Charlie?” The quiet voice came from the ground. “Charlie?”

Charlie gasped and dropped her gaze, the monster forgotten for a moment. “Gilda?”

The fairy’s eyes were open though she lay very still. Her lips barely moved but she stared up at Charlie and said again, this time with a long shuddering sigh, “Charlie.”

“Gilda!” Charlie dropped into a crouch and cupped the fairy’s face in her palm. “I thought you were dead.”

Gilda closed her eyes and shook her head minutely, gasping out a reply from gray lips. “Not...dead. Torment. Took my. Magic.” She lifted her hand, fingers curled listlessly, and gestured. “The tree. Sword from the tree.” 

Andrea said suddenly, voice trembling. “It’s moving, Charlie.”

Charlie lifted the crown again and rotated her arm like a periscope. The shadow monster had begun to prowl the perimeter of the clearing, one claw raised as though it trailed along a wall. “Andrea,” said Charlie after a beat. “I don’t think it can pass the tree.” She stood and walked towards the beast until she was inches away. Through the crown she could see the air shiver around the beast’s claw. Charlie looked up and saw that that the beast stalked the edge of the tree’s canopy. "I think we're safe under here.

“So what? We just wait here? Under a tree?”

“No. You wait under a tree. With her. She jerked her head toward Gilda. And I fight.” Charlie backed up. “First things first,” she said in a gentler tone as she crouched once more beside Gilda. “Sword? What sword?”

Gilda’s eyes were closed but she said in a stronger voice, “The sword is in the tree. Pull it out, Charlie. Only the sword can kill a torment.” 

“That thing. That’s a torment?”

Gilda nodded once, a tiny jerk of the chin. “The sword. Brought it through before the doorway died.”

Charlie looked at the tree. Its bark was roughly patterned like...well, like any old tree. If there was a sword, it was hidden. She thought back to her dream and shifted so that she knelt at its base. She rested her head on the trunk and rolled her forehead, pressing against the bark with her hands. There. Charlie felt something smooth and cold interrupt the bark. She placed her fingers on that spot and narrowed her eyes, then brought the crown up to frame it. There was something metal in the tree. “Found it, Gilda. But I can’t actually get it.”

“For you, Charlie. Believe-” Gilda coughed a wet hacking cough, mud sputtering from her mouth. 

“Okay. Okay. It’s okay, Gilda, don’t talk.” Charlie lifted her hand and touched the bark surrounding the little invisible piece of metal. Believe. What a fairy thing to say. Good thing she had spent all that time in Oz exercising that particular mental muscle. She pictured herself sliding her fingers into the tree, closing them around the hilt of a sword. Then she closed her eyes and did just that, deliberately closing her mind to the sensation of wood pressing roughly over her fingers, her hand, her wrist. She didn’t open them until she felt the sword slide all the way out with a sharp rasp. Charlie held it up over the three women. In the deep blue light it shone. She could see it even without the crown, now that it was out of the tree. 

The sword was a little longer than her forearm, rounded at the tip but with a deadly sharp edge running up and down the blade. It glistened in a way that wasn’t natural, catching light that wasn’t there. The center of the blade was full of scrolled artwork so fine and intricate that Charlie couldn’t make it out in the half light. The hilt was simple, comfortable, and felt moulded to her palm. Her hand tingled, if she was pressed to name it, a little bit like joy. It was the most beautiful weapon Charlie had ever held.


	10. Charlie fights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charlie fights.

Charlie handed the cake knife to Andrea. “I don’t know how much this will help you, but if anything happens to me and you can’t get to the sword… Or if that thing gets under the tree, you run. Just run. And stick it with the pointy end.” Andrea nodded and clasped the cake knife in her free hand, the other still white knuckling the shotgun. 

Through the crown, Charlie glanced at the shadow monster. _The torment,_ she thought. Appropriate. It crouched now, claws up in what was clearly a fighting stance. She swiveled the sword in one hand, testing its weight. She’d fought wounded and weighted down before but this was a bit of a joke. She had to see the torment to fight it and she needed to hold up the crown to see it. _Just hold on to the crown, Charlie. Don’t let go._

She bent over Gilda who lay breathing shallowly, and pressed her lips to her forehead. She felt warmer. Gilda wrinkled her forehead under her lips and when Charlie pulled back the fairy’s eyes were open. “Sorry. So sorry, Charlie.” Tears trembled in the corners of her eyes. 

“Hey,” Charlie soothed, setting down the sword and brushing her hair back. “It’s okay. We’ll...we’ll catch up later, okay?”

Gilda nodded and her body buckled in another wet cough. Charlie grabbed up the sword and advanced on the clearing edge and the waiting battle. “This is fine. Yeah. I’ve taken on bigger monsters. Those whuffabeasts in Oz were like twice as big!” _Though they didn’t have claws._ As she had done so many times in Oz, she closed off most of her mind. Her grip tightened on the sword and she channeled her attention towards it. Blade. Blood. Battle.

Charlie leapt at the torment swinging, slicing the blade under one of its claws. This close the thing still seemed so insubstantial. It was hard to judge distance, especially as night fell over the forest and the torment became darkness dancing over a slightly less dark background. Charlie kept her body beneath the tree’s canopy, just over that invisible protective line. She slashed with the sword, aiming for the claws arcing overhead, trying to learn its fighting patterns. Trying to spot weaknesses.

She expected the torment to back away and try to lure her from safety but instead it hovered near her. Through the crown she caught its claws as it dragged them over and around the barrier again and again. Then, as her blade sliced through the air, barely missing a spinning arm, one of the claws slid through the invisible barrier, following the path the blade had taken. Distantly, Charlie heard Andrea shriek and she realized the torment’s plan. Somehow her sword was slicing up the protective barrier, weakening it with every slash. She feinted left and rolled right, out of the protective circle. Charlie thrust her blade at the back of the creature and at last was rewarded with a brilliant flash of light as the blade made contact with the side of the beast. 

It howled and through her little crown porthole she watched the beast whirl on her and away from the tree’s barrier. Charlie took advantage of the space, dancing around the edge of the clearing and trying not to stumble over the hillocks of soil and root. She aimed a slice at the nearest leg and was rewarded with another gleam of light. Somehow she had to get through the blender of those claws and drive the sword point home. When one of the claws whirled up to swipe at her she saw an opening and went for it, diving with the sword into its black embrace. Something cold slid down her side with the thin precision of a razor blade. Charlie flinched back, diving aside as the other claw tried to dig into her flesh. She rolled across the uneven ground with the crown folded into her gut and staggered up against one of the wide root balls of the felled trees. The torment advanced and Charlie smiled the grim battle smile from her darkest self. And then the pain bloomed from the cut in her side.

Charlie screamed in anguish, momentarily forgetting the advancing torment, the crown in her fist, the sword in her hand. She had learned to limp through injury, grinding her way through battle on adrenaline alone. This feeling, though, was sorrow escalated to the point of agony. There was something almost existential about the pain that went well beyond anything she physically felt. It reminded her of the agony she had felt when she split her soul. She howled and backed into the tree’s root ball, dirt cascading around her. She dropped the crown and suddenly there was nothing in front of her but gray forest and deep, uncaring blue sky. Charlie tipped her head back, ready to give herself to it, her mouth open in a silent scream.

“Charlie!” Distantly Charlie heard Gilda scream. In her blurring vision something loomed in front of her, where the torment likely stood. It was Andrea. She slashed through the air with her ridiculous cake knife and a silver flash burned Charlie’s eyes for a moment. Andrea flew backwards then, as though thrown, and fell away out of Charlie’s vision. The silver flash cleared her head though and rattled the sorrow from her mind and body. She gripped the sword tightly again and raised it.

The torment stood before her, claws poised to strike. “Shit!” Charlie jumped to the side just in time and ran halfway around the tree to give herself a little recovery space. 

“Charlie?” Andrea’s voice was small and scared. Hurt? _Doesn’t matter. Focus._ “Where’d it go?”

Charlie looked at the torment making its way towards her around the canopy perimeter. “You can’t see it?”

“No. Is it gone?” Hopeful now. ”Did I kill it?”

“Well, good news, bad news,” said Charlie. “Good news, I don’t need to fight with that stupid crown anymore. Bad news? I think it’s picked a new target.” She could feel it settling in her like a rotten pit in her side. And then the torment attacked, claws whirling. Charlie was able to make hits with the blade along the claw arms and sometimes the legs but its torso and head were always so well protected. She would have to practically embrace the thing to get the sword close enough to pierce its body. 

Charlie parried and thrust and panted. Her arms grew heavier and her reactions grew slower. Gilda and Andrea were quiet. The only sounds were Charlie’s feet stomping the earth, gasping breaths, and the occasional wet slash as she made contact with the torment's clawed arms. 

Maybe Gilda and Andrea were dead. 

It was full night now and Charlie’s eyes strained to see the movements of the torment. Maybe she should take that suicide dive. End it, save Gilda and the queen. _Third time’s a charm,_ Charlie thought dully. 

Suddenly a gunshot rang out. The torment rippled and silver light flashed around its middle. Another gunshot and another split the air. The torment rippled with each shot. Charlie lifted her leaden arms and pinned the sword hilt before her breast. She drove forward with her body through the whirling blades and into the deep, black heart of the beast. 

Stabbing the torment felt like stabbing into a mound of pebbly dirt. Her body drove the blade forward and the blade skittered through its torso clumsily as though tiny stones deflected the sword into its drunkard path. Charlie tore the blade upward, straining with all her strength to cleave the beast in two. She felt its claws embrace her, piercing her shoulders and back and she drank in the pain, her mouth opening into a silent scream as she pulled the sword up through the top of the torment. With one last heave as the world went dark around her, she struck at its head and felt the blade slide through its neck, the torment’s blood spilling over her slick as mud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember, folks. Buffy says stick it with the pointy end.


	11. Charlie heads off into the sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy ending!

Charlie woke to the color red. She moaned and feebly batted at the light shining in her eyes, blinking furiously. The movement sent fire down her back. 

“Easy,” a voice said. The light moved away from her face and Charlie blinked her eyes until she could focus on the face in front of her. It was a woman in a suit using a phone as a flashlight. The phone was upturned to illuminate her face and Charlie squinted. The woman was vaguely familiar but Charlie couldn’t place her until she quirked an eyebrow. 

“Jackel,” she slurred. “Almost didn’t recognize you without your sunglasses.” 

The brows jumped up. “I pull them off for special occasions. Ripley.”

“Feel like a wampa just tore off my arm.”

“Nearly did. I thought I told you to call me if you needed help.”

Charlie wheezed. It was almost a laugh. Her arms felt like fallen branches, dead and heavy at her side. “You shot it.”

“My own special mix. Salt and silver. And you stabbed it. It gave almost as good as it got. Your friend over there saved you.” The Jackel nodded off to the side and Charlie rolled her head. In the moonlight she could just make out two figures a few feet away. Andrea, she realized, cradling Gilda. 

“Gilda? Is she okay? What happened?” Charlie tried to struggle up to sit but found the most she could do was roll her shoulders and lift her head. “Frak.” She let her head bang into the ground again. 

Instantly Jackel had her hand pressed against Charlie’s shoulder. “She’ll be fine. You need to relax. We’ve called for an ambulance. They’re going to take care of you and your friend here.”

“Um, I don’t think...” Charlie began. Every inch of her ached. Her heart ached. A big lump of sorrow seemed to squat in her ribcage. Left over from the torment or from her own darkness? Well. File that away to examine later.

She’d accept being swaddled in a crisp, clean hospital for a while if it meant she could lose herself in sleep. But Gilda...what would a hospital do for - or do _to_ a fairy? 

As if reading her mind Jackel patted her shoulder. “I have my suspicions about your friend over there. I watched her heal you, after all.” Her mouth twitched in an almost smile. “Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’ll look out for you two. Don’t you worry.”

Charlie gaped at her and then attempted a smile of her own. “An FBI agent and a fairy walk into a hospital…”

“Don’t forget hunter. Don’t those jokes always work in threes? Fairy, you say. Hmmm. Interesting.”

“Back off, Mulder.” Charlie wheezed out a laugh. They were silent for a while and the clearing filled instead with the high symphony of crickets.

Andrea broke the silence. “Thank you, Carrie. Er, Charlie? Whatever your name is. For everything.” Charlie focused on the woman who knelt with her head bowed over Gilda. 

“Thank you for helping me,” Charlie said earnestly. “Queen of Moons. It's been an honor.” She found she could lift her forearm now and did so, flopping it towards the queen. Andrea grabbed at her hand. “And Andrea, I’m so sorry I brought you here. You shouldn’t have seen that. Nobody should have to see that.”

Andrea hiccoughed a little. She was crying quietly, Charlie guessed. “I’ll manage,” she said. “We're alive. That’s what’s important.”

In the distance, an ambulance wailed. Charlie let herself fall into the darkness one more time.

When Charlie woke again she lay in a hospital bed. Blue sky filled a nearby window, half blinding her with its brilliance. She closed her eyes until the pain dissipated then opened them to look around. She was in a small minty green room with a curtain half pulled around her bed. A monitor beeped ponderously next to her bed tracking her heart rate and blood pressure. She moved her hand and found a monitor clamped to her finger. Something draped across her face and she raised her hand to find oxygen tubing looped under her nose. _Modern medicine. Fraking amazing._ She lay there quietly for a few minutes as she carefully tested her limbs. Toes, fingers, legs, arms - they all seemed functional albeit a little weak. Suddenly she sat up, the machine next to her ratcheting up its beeping. “Gilda? Gilda?” Charlie’s curtain pulled aside to display Jackel. “Where is she? Is she okay? How long have I been asleep?” Charlie craned her neck, trying to see around the agent. 

The Jackel patted one blanket clad toe. “She’s fine. Can’t keep a fairy cooped up in a hospital unless you’re trying to kill her. She’s in the hospital’s rose garden. Singing to the flowers. You’ve been out for a little over a day.” 

“Oh, thank god.”

The Jackel shook her head. “She’s making them bloom with her songs. It's getting to be a real problem, actually. Glad to see you wide eyed and bushy tailed,” drawled the agent. “Someone’s got to pack that friend of yours out of here before she really draws some attention.”

“Singing the flowers awake, huh? Sounds nice.” Charlie said weakly. She leaned back against the pillows with a groan. “Ugh.” At the agent’s questioning look she deadpanned, “I feel amazing.”

“Relatively, I’ll bet you do.”

Charlie narrowed her eyes. “How bad was it?” 

“White tunnel bad, I think.” The Jackel cocked her head. “Some supernatural do have their uses, don’t they?”

"Yeah. Gilda was...a welcome surprise. My first couple of run-ins weren't exactly on the positive end of the scale, you know? Speaking of surprises. How the hell did you find us?"

"FBI, Ripley." She touched her nose. "We have our ways. I suspected you were a hunter, of course."

Charlie grumbled. "I was afraid of that."

"You really need to update your badge more often. And control the blush."

"Hey there were...extenuating circumstances. Why didn't you say anything?"

"In my experience the average hunter isn't exactly friendly towards authority figures. Especially since I _do_ have a boss and partner I answer to who don't know anything about the beasts in the world. I kept tabs on you, just in case." She shook her head. "A torment. Always something new in this job."

Charlie gaped at her. "You knew all along?"

"No, no your fairy filled me in." At Charlie's demanding look she continued, "a torment is apparently a creature that lives in the veil. You know, where souls go that don't pass on to Heaven or Hell? It preys off the souls trapped there. Apparently there are theories by fairy, ahem, scientists that think torments used to be souls that transformed after centuries spent in the veil. Gilda tried to summon you and..." The Jackel cocked her head. "Gilda got pretty vague on this point, by the way. When she tried to summon you this torment somehow got pulled to earth." 

Charlie didn't know what to say. Apparently she had a lot to discuss with Gilda. “So what happens now? Is there some kind of FBI memory wipe?"

Jackel didn’t answer right away. She reached into her suit pocket and pulled out her sunglasses, slipping them on. “You watch too much TV. I’ll tell that fairy of yours that you’re awake. Take care, kid,” she said, giving Charlie’s foot one more pat. “And don’t lose my card.”

Ten minutes later Gilda stood over Charlie’s bed, her face puckered with worry. She had washed up while Charlie slept and wore a pair of green scrub pants and a Handel MI t-shirt that screamed ‘hotel gift shop’. Despite the clothing, she looked radiant. Regal. _Swoon._ God, Gilda was a welcome sight.

“Charlie,” she said. “This is all my fault.” 

“Hey.” Charlie reached up her hand to clasp the fairy’s arm. “No, don’t say that. I’ll be fine. I am fine. Hardly a scratch, right? Thanks to you, I hear.” The fairy frowned and sat down on the edge of the hospital bed. Charlie sighed a little happy sigh, her thigh warm where Gilda rested against her. 

“If it weren’t for me, though. Oh, Charlie. You see, I called you to me.”

“I heard. What does that mean?”

“Almost a week ago I found your people. I assumed you would be among them. So I opened a doorway in the woods and called you.”

“You mean you tried to find me at the Moondoor Jubilee? But I wasn’t there I was…” _Dead. Oh._

The fairy shook her head. “I didn’t know you had passed beyond the veil. When I called you to me I tore you through the veil and with your soul, I pulled down a torment from the veil and manifested it on the earth. The spell is a simple one, but strong. If I had known you were in Heaven I never would have called you back to this plane.” 

“I woke up where I died.” Charlie shivered at the memory of that cold bathtub.

The fairy nodded miserably. “Your soul returned to where it departed. And the torment was bound to my magic. It followed me here. It would have gone through the doorway. Devastated the Hollow Forest. I called the vorpal blade and buried myself and the blade in the doorway to close it for good. I did not think I would wake again.” She shook her head. “I did not deserve it.”

“Oh, Gilda.” Charlie held her hand, her mind empty of anything to say. So Gilda had resurrected her. Not Sam and Dean. No evil magic spell. Just Gilda. “Why did you call me?”

Gilda laughed bitterly and the sound of it felt wrong to Charlie. Gilda shouldn’t know bitterness. “I am to be crowned queen. The Forever Crown was passed to me. A thousand years of rule and the ruler can not leave the kingdom. I was not ready to bear the burden.” She looked at Charlie and tears tracked along her cheeks. “I thought to see you one more time.”

Charlie couldn't help the warm flush that spread through her body at the idea of being _wanted_. “One last adventure?”

Gilda nodded. “Instead humans have died and you were gravely wounded. I am the monster in my own story.”

Charlie frowned. “Listen. You didn’t know. It’s not your fault.” She sat forward and shyly brushed Gilda’s curls back from her shoulder. “Anyway. You’re here with me now, aren’t you? I’ll bust out of this hospital and we’ll head back to the forest, you and me. Maybe bring a picnic. Catch up. I’ll help you get back, okay?”

“I can’t get back, not that way.” 

“Oh right. The doorway. Are there more? Or can you, like, make one?”

Gilda shrugged. “My powers are weak. The torment drew much of them from me. I barely had enough to heal you, even a little." She shook her head. "Another of my failures, that I could not do more for you. There is another doorway many miles from here. A doorway built into a great red tree overlooking the ocean.”

“Then we’ll find it. Gilda, I swear we’ll find it, okay?” She rested her hand on the fairy’s shoulder, her eyes wide and earnest. “I’ll help you.” She rubbed her thumb along the fairy's sleeve. "I'll help you. I want to."

Gilda, to Charlie's relief, smiled at last. It was like the sun breaking over Oz, back when magic still felt beautiful.

The next day Charlie had convinced the attending doctor that she was well enough to leave. She and Gilda took a taxi back to her hotel. Gilda writhed in the car, shrinking from the metal sides. She held Charlie's hand very tightly.

Dorothy’s motorcycle still sat parked outside and the Do Not Disturb sign still hung from her room handle. When she opened the door she let out a sigh of relief. “Pre-paying for the win. Oh! The Jackel strikes again.” On her bed sat Hammerspace and next to it the sword, polished to a sheen. “Gilda,” she said as she picked up the sword reveling in the little thrill from the blade, “things might actually be looking up.” 

Gilda looked around the hotel room, a hothouse rose in a weedy city lot. Her gaze landed on the sword and she dipped her head as if in reverance. “The vorpal blade gave itself to you, Charlie. It is a great honor.”

Charlie turned it over in her hands. The Jackel must have cleaned it because the blade gleamed. In the daylight she could finally see the fine designs were a carefully wrought battle scene full of beasts and men and woven through it, a recurring motif of trees. "It's beautiful." Reverently, she set it back on the bed.

Her brain pounced on something Gilda said. “Wait. The vorpal blade? I’ve heard that before.” She closed her eyes and let her mind drift back to middle school English class. “Through and through the vorpal blade went snicker-snack… There’s a poem about a vorpal blade. A jabberwock with eyes of flame...”

Gilda looked surprised. “It’s a powerful weapon of my people. I knew it would kill the torment, if only there was someone to wield it.”

Charlie slid her fingers around the sword, tracing the designs. “Gilda,” she said at last. “What the torment did to me... I still feel it, I think.”

Gilda sighed and settled onto the bed. "My people have traveled between your world and the Hollow Forest for centuries. Still, we do not know everything about torments, save that they cause extreme despair in their victims and their power increases with each new death.”

“That pain. I wanted to… I thought about…”

“Yes.” Gilda pulled Charlie down to sit next to her on the bed and wrapped an arm around her, rocking her gently as she continued. “They live in the veil. They feed off of souls who are trapped there. Driving them mad. That pain...lingers.”

“Oh” 

“I’m so sorry, sweet Charlie.” Gilda pressed her lips into Charlie’s hair. “You did not deserve this.”

Charlie shrugged. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life isn’t fair. But it can be bearable.” She looked at Gilda. “And if you’re lucky, it can be pretty magical.” She wiggled her shoulders until she felt fully tucked into Gilda’s side. “Even though you didn’t intend it, I’m glad you called me back to earth. I need you to know that.”

Gilda hummed then said, “Magic is something I've had my entire life. But when I was here with you on earth. Charlie, I felt things that I still do not understand. Even in the midst of Boltar's command, I still could see the beauty in this world.” She straightened and dropped her arm. “But I must get home regardless. My people will miss me.”

Charlie smiled at her. “We’ll get to that doorway. I promise you. I'll get you back, Gilda."

The fairy smiled her kind smile and after some hesitation, nodded.

“I noticed you did not enjoy the taxi ride."

Gilda shuddered in response. "It was like a cage. At least underground I had the company of worms."

"Oh. Ah, okay." Company, huh? "What are your thoughts about motorcycles? Open air, wind on your skin? Me? You?”

“Oh yes, that sounds much better.” A smile ghosted across Gilda's face.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Charlie said. She stood and held out her hand. Charlie felt a rush of wild, adolescent joy when Gilda settled her own into Charlie’s palm. “Let’s go have an adventure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest story I've ever written. I would love to get feedback! Please? Pretty please?


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